Technical FAQ

Q. What is the frequency range?
A. 64-1,700MHz, although straw poll tests on pre-production units indicate that units can be stretched down to 51.5MHz or so. Upper frequency limit is beyond 2,000MHz. In testing, we have determined that there is a gap between about 1,100MHz and 1,270MHz where the design of the local oscillator VCO, PLL and divider chain in the tuner chip don’t provide seemless coverage.

Q. What can the FUNcube Dongle receive?
A. The FUNcube Dongle has no restriction on modulation schemes: it is limited only by the application program running on the host computer. As long as the signal fits within about an 80kHz bandwidth, the FUNcube Dongle is capable of receiving the radio signal. So, for analogue reception, as well as narrow band FM and SSB, it is also possible to receive, for example, sound subcarriers for TV broadcast. Similarly for data reception, as long as a data demodulator has been written that will accept standard soundcard quadrature I/Q reception, that will work too.

Q. What is the bandwidth?
A. 96kHz is the quadrature sampling rate. Once the ADC’s decimation filter skirts have been taken into account, you have about 80kHz.

Q. What applications work with the FUNcube Dongle?
A. As well as the forthcoming FUNcube front end application, any application that understands a standard stereo soundcard configured for quadrature, or I/Q, reception should work. Examples include Linrad, Spectravue, Rocky and M0KGK.

Q. What is the sensitivity?
A. Each unit is tested for 0.15uV for 12dB SINAD NBFM at 145MHz and 435MHz.

Q. What operating systems are compatible?
A. Currently Windows 2000 SP4, XP 32 bit, and Vista and Windows 7 32 and 64 bit have been tested. The sound card element works with Mac OSX and Ubuntu 10.10 32 and 64 bit, but the frequency setting application has not been ported yet.

Q. What’s the difference between versions?
A. There are two versions, the Base and the Pro models. The Base model is frequency restricted and designed as an entry level minimal cost device, targetted for educational outreach. The Pro model is unrestricted in its frequency coverage.

Q. Can I upgrade a “Base” version to a “Pro” version?
A. At present, the upgrade will require a return of the device so that it can be modified to accept “Pro” firmware.

Q. Is the firmware upgradeable?
A. Yes, already the devices can have their firmware upgraded in a matter of a few seconds by the user. However, Pro firmware and Base firmware are not interchangeable.

Q. Do I need front end filters?
A. Some people have experienced front end overloading with the FCD at VHF in particular. Although there is fixed and programmable front end filtering already on the FCD, at VHF it’s not very selective. Typically the symptom is that it will appear deaf: this is the noise floor rising due to an overloaded front end. You can see this in Spectravue as when you plug in the antenna the noise floor rises potentially several tens of dB. Although reducing gain can help, of course innevitably this is at the expense of the unit’s native sensitivity. At this stage it is worth pursuing external filtering options. We’re working on some solutions already, but some readily available commercial solutions include Hamtronics’ LNP preselector, SSB Electronics SP-2000, and DCI’s DCI-145-2H and DCI-145-4H. As these are not exactly cheap, I have been working on some ideas here that you may like to try: http://www.funcubedongle.com/?p=456. We’re also investigating at a reasonably priced active no-tune solution.

Q. I am having trouble upgrading the firmware. What can I do?
A. The most reliable way to do this is from Windows. It is essential that, after placing the unit in bootloader mode, any other software that might access the FCD is shut down before you attempt to update the firmware.

Q. What support options are there?
A. You can email me using my Paypal email account, or alternatively there is a very active FUNcube Yahoo group that often provides answers more quickly! http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/funcube/

550 Responses to Technical FAQ

The remarkable idea and very nice price! There is one question – a bandwidth this receiver about 80 kHz. My the sound card provides 192 kHz. Whether there will be a possibility to inferred from the device a signal before ADC (for example 2.5 mm stereo jack)? In the street and with notebook internally ADC, and dwellings in stationary conditions an external sound card with wide bandwidth. Excuse for bad English and repeated post.

The restriction of bandwidth is twofold: to keep costs of the unit down, and that technically speaking, 192kHz codecs frequenctly have decimation filters with skirts well before Fs/2 at quad rate for the ADCs. I’m afraid that there is no stereo jack provided. The signal internally is also differential to maintain a decent SNR.

Theoretically 5m is the limit without hubs. I believe that you can run up to three daisy chained hubs with up to 5m between them each. You may have seen “active” USB extenders. These are essentially one port hubs. I need to test this theory though! So you could run up to 20m and still be within specification. I’m afraid I’m not at home at the moment and much of my stuff is in storage so to get a definitive answer might take a while.

But yes, I understand why you would ask the question! I’ll let you know the answer just as soon as I can.

I have tried with a daisy chain of three hubs with 5m between each plus a final 5m passive (total 20m) and this works. Only the first hub was powered. It may be that it would work completely bus powered if nothing else is hanging off the daisychain. Strangely, also a 10m fully passive worked, but that is not recommended here: http://www.usb.org/about/faq/ans5

To add to my previous remarks, it appears from the USB spec that you can daisy chain up to five 5m “active” segments plus one 5m passive giving you 30m, or near enough 100 feet.

The FCD is a USB 1.1 device running at full speed (12Mbps). I am trying to drag an old laptop out of the dust with a USB 1.1 port on it but it only has 64MB RAM and thus only barely supports Windows 2000 let alone XP. The FCD is recognised but now it’s struggling to find some driver components, sso it needs a bit more time on it. I’ll see if I can get it to work on a fully USB 1.1 port at some point.

Well, it looks like it works on USB 1.1 on Windows 2000 SP4 too without any extra drivers! Even though I say so myself, the choice to use HID and a standard USB audio interfacess has had quite a lot more benefits than I originally anticipated.

Also, it identified a bottom line for CPUs: Spectavue was starting to stutter a bit on the 233MHz Pentium in the 11+ year old Toshiba Libretto 110CT I was using – with only 64MB RAM. But it worked!

Thanks for the info and you’ve answered the Version number/speed question I was about to ask. Been looking at USB extenders of which there are quite a number ranging from cheap to extortionate. Anyway, it opens up a number of possibilities.

Thank you for your question. I am open to correction on this, but n first looks, Signals Analyzer appears not to be real time: instead it seems to take a .wav file and allows the user to analyse the data retrospectively. Certainly it would work with .wav files recorded directly from the FCD.

The HPF will be included on the production models although it will be yours truly doing the mod. It’s a pretty simple procedure retrofitting a couple of chip caps and inductors. There is also a minor firmware change that will be included.

Hi Howard,
When this will be done , may I have doc about this, or better may I send you my FCD for the mod?
In this case, maybe it will be also possibel to modify it for the external pre supply ? I will wait for this , and if it will be possible, also for some form of external filters switching in some way ; I would necessarily work with heavy bandpass filters for the 70 and 144MHz bands ! Thanks , 73 de Augusto i2jjr / 9h3jr

Hello Howard,
I’m one of the lucky few that ordered a FUNcube dongle yesterday which I am really looking forward to getting.
I have one question , what type is the antenna connector ? (This is so I can make sure I have the correct one ready when it arrives)

Thanks for all your efforts with this , I’m sure it has taken over your life to a certain extent.
73’s Peter G7MMW

Just got the FCD up and running, tried 3 differnent SDR progs currently using winrad, all show a large spike at the centre frequency about 40dB above the noise floor, cannot find any way to get rid of it. Also noise floor seems high even with no antenna connected, tried different gain settings, can you offer some advice please?

This is the zero IF. With all zero IF receivers, including the Softrock there will be some DC offset. There should be an option in your SDR software to null this out. Spectravue has it in the SoundCard IN Setup menu item.

With no antenna connected, using Spectravue and pressing the “Defaults” button on the FCD controller software, you should see around -105dB noise floor. The “Defaults” button sets the gains on the device to some sensible settings optimised for optimum sensitivity.

I was trying to get these defaults into the firmware before release but I felt that it was better to use solid firmware (the firmware you have has been static since October) with a simple button press from the front end rather than risk a rushed firmware release.

Regarding DC offset, and also image rejection, as well as being able to optimise this with your existing SDR software, the next firmware release has this integrated into the FCD as well so it can be done on the FCD or in your host software (or both!). The benefit of doing it on the FCD is that DC offset and image corrections can be made to be frequency specific. I believe it will also be possible to perform a better null as the resolution is higher than some host software.

I found in spectravue pressing the NCO Null button got the spike down quite a bit, I also tried the soundcard in adjustment but can’t get it any better than 20dB above the noise floor.

With regard to the noise floor I got it lower by going into the recording devices menu in windows, selecting the FCD and turning the level down to 1, the adjustment seems very course, 0 of course shows nothing, 1 shows the floor at about -110dBm, the scale goes from 0 to 100, the device shows as a microphone in windows 7 x64 is that correct?

I’m away taking the evening off from Dongling, but a couple of quick comments.

Firstly, the resolution of zeroing the DC offset on Spectravue isn’t as granular as it could be. It may be that other SDR software might have finer resolution. To whet your appetite, the next firmware release will have dc offset and image rejection controlled on the device, and the host software will also allow you to adjust with frequency.

Secondly, I will have to take a look at thus on my Windows 7 x64 box but I suspect that reducing the recording level will reduce sensitivity.

In SDR it’s quite common just to avoid the area around 0Hz. However this does not stop you demodulating unless it’s a really weak signal. For example you can demodulates a wide band fm signal that spans the entire passband over the zero Hz. (If you try demodulating WFM you will find that it distorts as the 96kHz isn’t quite wide enough, but it’s perfectly readable).

Reply number 2! I have had a chance to put this on my W7 x64 box. It’s a bit fiddly as the test set lives in the shack and the W7 x64 box is my media centre in the living room. Anyway, I ran 15m of USB extenders and tested it.

Sure enough, you are right. It also looks like setting the level to 1 is about right too, and there is no degradation in sensitivity either.

Yes, it does appear as a microphone. It’s a long story, as originally it was set to be a USB Audio satellite receiver device but I changed it to being a USB Audio microphone device while chasing another fault and never changed it back again. This won’t inhibit your listening pleasure, it’s just a semantics thing.

Anyway, thanks for the heads up. I hadn’t noticed this before, I’ll check under Vista too, that might do a similar thing.

I will put that into a wish list, but in front of that I already have higher bandwidth (in the MHz). Neither are simple modifications, they’re both quite fundamental re-thinks. I also don’t think at present either will fit in the Dongle package, it was quite a squeeze as it was.

In case you don’t remember me, I made the executive decision to give the last available Tracker Jr. to you instead of the Australian Ham. My wife sold you the last one and I had sold it to the Australian. I had to really scramble to get another Tracker built and sent out to the Australian Ham before he got home. I guess it worked out OK..
I suppose that you will be including a virtual Tracker JR in a future version of the FCD. Should be rather easy to implement. I think you made the right choices on the FCD, except that you need to have a used small scale automatic building machine doing the tedious operations, or you and your helpers will soon go nuts! LOL, as the kiddies say.

Satellites stopped being fun for me after the demise and non-replacement of AO – 40!

My ham operations these days are on PSK and the digital derivatives. A well designed User Defined Radio running about 40 watts on 20M, 40M and 30M (priority order) in a “Super Dongle” box with a nice big free spinning weighted main tuning knob and ~four 300 degree nice small knobs and an IPAD like screen showing the calibrated spectrum, frequency and only the needed setup interactions, and IPAD-like finger controlled inputs.

Overall input and output priorities and “knobs” and “switches”, by type, function, and position must always be definable by the user. My own input priorities would be Memory Recall, Knobs & Switches , Finger Inputs, Voice Control, Keyboard, and in last place would be a mouse.

Hello. I have all day testing the FCD Pro and reading other users messages. I updated it to the latest firmware.

Now is running the WRPlus 1.04 but only I´m listening noise. I read the FAQ but I don´t know what´s wrong. Also I tried to receive data in the local aprs frequency with Mixw software + WRPlus. No data but I can listen sometimes the packets sound mixed with noise.

I did hooked up a sat dish LNB for the Ku Band to try to pickup satellites
signals with the FCD like I successfuly did before with my Icom IC-R1500, but they are not showing on the SpectraVue screen quite like they did with the Icom on the Spectran screen…

Is it because the FCD itself and do I have to enter differents settings in the FCD
frequency control in order to get better results ?

I must say that I always put a DC block before the FCD antenna input, of course.

Hello Zoulou, (heh)
You can download the orginal firmware and flash it:http://www.funcubedongle.com/MyImages/export18b.bin
Howard is aware of a gap introduced in ver 18c that was not present in 18c; we can expect that he will fix that in the next release.
78!
Mark

Yes, I made a typo when I rushed out the 18c firmware. It was pushed out primarily to address the automatic settings of the “Defaults” and to improve VHF strong signal handling by choosing better filters.

It also already had some other changes in it to support more granular frequency settings, and this broke the setting of frequencies from about 660MHz to about 1GHz due to a typo on my part. Apologies!

As Mark states, reverting to the original 18b firmware will get you back.

Firmware 18d with this fixed in it and a tranche of other updates, primarily aimed at opening up the full API, but also including IF RSSI feedback to front ends and DC/IQ correction on the device itself will be available imminently.

How about a 64 MHz oscillator and a mixer in front of this device to act as an ‘up-converter’ for the 0 MHz thru 64 MHz portion of the spectrum?
This would give ‘us’ (I just ordered one so I count myself as an owner) compete coverage of the short waves as well as VHF and UHF up to the upper limit.

I have come across a potential problem with WinRad and its deviants. These all use the ExtIO functionality for control, these use a 32 bit signed integer to set the frequency. That means the frequency can not be greater than about 2.14GHz. I know the FCD limit is nominally 1.7GHz but I understand it does better than this and would be interested in what people are finding the limit actually is.

The FCD itself uses unsigned 32 bit numbers so it is numerically limited to 4.3GHz, which with the current hardware is no problem.

I’m trying to run SpectraVue in Windows XP (under VmWare on a MacBook Pro) and have FChid.exe running. FChid recognizes the Funcube; but when I click the “set frequency” button with the frequency entered to almost any value, I get an error message saying: “Target frequency must be between 50000 and 2500000″. I’ve tried entering values of 145000, 147500 and 50000 and still get the same error message.

In Spectravue I’ve been trying to set the center frequency; but I’m not sure how to set things up to work with the dongle. I have the input device set to sound card and the sound cad input set to FunCube Dongole v0.0.. The sample rate is set to 96000 and the BWlimit is set to 96000. The center frequency is set to 1475000.

“Target frequency must be between 50000 and 2500000″.
145.600Mhz in the FChid would be 145600, I guess strange things might happen under VmWare, your best to compile Qt cross platform source code.
or request this from the Yahoo group.
Rob

Sorry you are having difficulties. I have never seen this error unless the frequency is outside those limits (taking into account the frequency correction): can you confirm which version of FCHid you are using, and what the frequency correction is please?

For serial numbers<810, it should be ~999,885, and for serial numbers >=810 it should be ~999,988.

Friday I received my FCD, #246! I was happy and curious of course. Yesterday I would test it a little at the bench before to go out in the cold to do “real radio”.
The problem I fight all the day, is that the FCD goes into
“bootload mode” every few times I change the frequency or other parameters on the FCHid panel. The trouble is random.. but it’s getting worse and worse as more as I use it! Yesterday I could work for a while, some time at the second change, I got stuck.
To recover, I have to unplug the FCD for seveal minutes and sometime also reboot the PC.
Often, when I plug back the FCD, it seems to work with Spectravue, but as soon as I launch the FCHid application, it switch to “bootload” mode.. no explanation!

I’ve experienced that with both my laptops with WinXp and both firmware 18b and 18c. No changes…
At the end of the day, I got frustated.. and fully stuck! I believe that must be something wrong on my own setups.. it could’nt be so bad by itself!

The testing environment is clean, no RF in the shack. I triyed also this morning in
portable.. no way! Very often when I launch the FCHid, the device switch to “bootloader” mode, for no known reasons! Almost impossible to operate!..
Anybody here could give some tips about?
Many thanks to all!

Hi Howard,
I have a similar problem.
Often the Dongle is in “booatload mode”. Sometimes it works (but random) and it communicate with the program to set freq. But, random, I listen the “disconnection” sound of the periferical in Windows and no response from Dongle. Sometimes I connect the Dongle into USB and I listen the first sound and immediatly another disconn sound. When it works I can listen the signal but with a great Voltage. With a Test Set I see a trace with a 100 mV, for example. Sometimes, moving SMA, I receive a good signal and a good trace with a very little sig. (0,15 microV). Excuseme for the great disturb with my questions. 73 and TNX again for Your work.
Ciao from Italy 😉
Tony

When it is not working is it saying “Bootloader” in fast CW? Does it happen while the FCD is plugged in? Is there physical movement (while it is plugged in) that make the FCD go into bootloader mode? If so, a quick fix may be simply to clean the USB contacts with some isopropyl alcohol and do five or six rapid insert/remove cycles.

In addition, it might be worth just trying the prerelease formware that has an increased timing when hard resetting the tuner chip. http://www.funcubedongle.com/MyImages/export18dpre.bin please note that this is an early release of 18d code so there are some other things that need fixing, but it might help do diagnose if there’s another problem.

Well Howard and TNX.
Actually I am not able to set any command using FHHid (Succed, FCD Found… HIDSetFreq of 99988 returns 0… Error, FCD frequency NOT set.). I have used FCHIDBL for export18dpre. All OK but FCD not works. I have cleaned the USB contacts with isopropyl alcohol and the rapid insert/remove cycles… NOTHING.

I am not able to do other… and I have the fear to damage the dongle more.
Now, I repeat, I am not able do give any command…

Is possible, for You, if I ship the Dongle, to check it ?
I know that your time is precious, but I do not know what to do.

Many thank You.

———————————————————–

When it is not working is it saying “Bootloader” in fast CW?
I AM NOT REMEBER BUT I THINK YES…

Does it happen while the FCD is plugged in?
YES.

Is there physical movement (while it is plugged in) that make the FCD go into bootloader mode?
ABSOUTELY NO MOVIMENTS.

Hi Declan
Not what the FUNcube dongle was intended for but there is software available at the yahoo group that will allow storing of frequencies in WRplus,using ExtIO.dll files.
The FUNcube dongle software is at a very early stage of development.
So yes you can,but it’s never going to be a AOR,but for the price you can’t go wrong.
All mode, 64-1,700MHz
Rob M0TFO

Hello, nice job done, congrats..
Is there a room to add a spectrum analyzer in your SW, so the dongle can be used also as a low end instrument. The technique of scanning parts of the band, memorising, combining and displaying onthe screen should maybe work..

We’re anticipating initially that people will add VFO code to existing spectrum analyser software rather than the other way around, and that is already happening. For the FUNcube satellite telemetry receive software we’ll have a spectrum view.

Hello Howard,
I’ve received the dongle #199 on 25 Jan at noon, nice job!
One question: with firmware 18dpre it is impossible to null image of signal generator at 100,01MHz with Spectravue I/Q balance settings and the image level is higher in respect to real signal at right side of DC zero (offset: 10KHz), after reload of 18b firmware I’m able to obtain the null of image. It is a 18dpre bug ?

This is great stuff! I would definitely like to get one fro the next batch.

Interestingly, a standard “C band” commercial LNB (such as an NJT NJS8486EN or a Norsat 3120N) would provide an inexpensive way of receiving in the Amateur Satellite band from 3400 to 3410 MHz. With a high-side injection LO of 5150MHz, these devices would output an inverted image of a signal at 3405MHz at an IF of 1745MHz.

Similar approaches could be taken for essentially “off the shelf” LNBs for other bands, including 2.4GHz and 10GHz. These LNBs typically require a DC supply fed up the coax of +19VDC at up to 350mA; this would have to be provided via an external DC Bias-T. However, some of the LNBs (the more expensive ones) also require a 10MHz (sine wave) reference signal up the coax, at around -10dB to 0dBm. Do you have a 10MHz clock available within the FCD, and if so, would it be feasible to multicouple that reference onto the coax inner conductor?

Does that 10MHz signal need to be phase locked to the receiver reference (I guess not)?. If this is not the case, there are plenty of ways to get a nice 10MHz signal, from internal oscillators in test equipment (lots of them ovenized), to GPS controlled oscillators. Of course, having it into the FCD would be a plus but, well, we can’t have everything inside this wonderful package

What does the response look like around zero output frequency? Most direct conversion receivers have serious phase noise problems so close to their local oscillators. Is there a high pass filter after the mixer that creates a notch around the center frequency?

I am trying to decide how to best use this on the ARISSAT-1 downlink. If it could be carefully tuned to track Doppler, then the Funcube’s 0-frequency notch would land on the satellite’s own and there wouldn’t be a problem; the Funcube would capture the entire satellite passband.

If the Funcube were statically tuned, I could track the Doppler on the BPSK beacon fairly easily, but the +/- 3.3 kHz shift around the nominal 145.98 MHz passband center would eat into the upper end of the linear translator section between AOS and closest approach. It would eat into the FM channel in the upper half of the transponder between closest approach and LOS, but that seems less of a problem since there isn’t much FM sideband energy there.

It would still be best to have the Funcube either closely track the passband or push it off to one side so the 0-frequency notch would be out of the way. In that case I probably couldn’t capture the entire transponder output, with Doppler, with the Funcube.

Sorry for the delay in replying, you caught us while preparing for a sale weekend which is innevitably rather frenetic. It may be I answered your question regarding phase noise in another private email, but if not I have placed some information here: http://www.funcubedongle.com/?p=460

HI , I am having fun with my new dongle.
It does have some desence with strong local pagers in the 450mhz band.
A filter or trap corrects this.
Is three an easy way to have winradplus to directly tune the dongle ?
Lloyd N9RPU

Does anyone know how fast I’ll be able to change frequency when tracking Doppler? I have an application that is currently successfully issuing as many as 50 changes per second with a flex5000 and hope to be able to achieve similar rates with the FCD. This is at TCA when the 70 cm birds are moving at over 3000 Hz/minute.

I need help I recieved my dongle yesterday plugged it in followed the instructions for setting up and testing but unfortunatly I can only get LBC ,I cant change the frequency.
I am running in Windows 7 and using WR+.I have upgraded the firmware to the latest editionbut to no avail we are still getting LBC loud and clear.What am I doing wrong?
Thank You
Peter G7GCF

Peter
Pop over to the Funcube group http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/funcube/
Most issues are sorted very quickly. But check you are running the FCD front end, LO tuning can only be done via a DLL file with WRplus- also found on the group.
Funny, I live In Bath, and listen to LBC via DAB most days. you will also find user guides.

Hello!
I am unhappy. Yesterday I’ve been listening to 144 575 MHz (or to a local radio-station).
Today, the FCD is completely silent. I use it with a small rubber-antenna for a
2m handheld radio.
Neither WR nor Spectravue something to see or hear. The
communication with the FCD works! Even a re-install the
Firmware did not succeed. I tested the FCD to multiple PCs.

please don’t ask me why. I don’t understand my problem. I tested on a Mac Book with parallels right now and it works!! The local radio-station and the packet-node on 144.800 MHz. All is ok. Tomorrow i will research the pc-problems.

With the help of F6BYJ my funcube working correctly now. Sorry to have bothered with this simple problem. You did a great tool for amateurs and I thank you for everything.
Congratulations.
F6HDW Jean Claude in ARIEGE France

Hello howard I fcd nr. 316, I connected fcd
with the soft
vr plus and works
responds to all commands but I can’t receive any signal
with or without antenna is the same thing does not receive anything in any frequency it is perhaps a problem in input,
can I send it to a control?
What address should I send it and how many euros I must send to the
return shipping?
Thanks Andrea

hello howard thanks for the reply
FDC works correctly get the noise bandwidth regularly
with FCHid active all connection parameters are regular and if I enter the frequency of 100 mhz as instructed and click default FCD receives see and feel the spectrum signal cw
I also increased the input gain up to + 30 db but
do not enter anything from no signal, without the antenna or the antennas connected to the same thing the noise does not change and do not receive anything,
I also tried with the laptop in two meters near the fcd but nothing gets no signal
hi I’m desperate
73
Andrea

If you believe the unit to be faulty, you can mail it back to me and I will send a replacement. To speed things up, email me proof of posting and I will send you a replacement immediately before I receive your unit back.

Hi, I have no test-sets here; how does the FCD perform at 64.4550 MHz ? I would like to use it as a Pan-Adapter for an Icom Rig that has that first IF frequency.
I have read elsewhere that near its bands edges – thus 64.4550- the FCD is not on top anymore. Howard, some indication on this? Thanks! 73 de Augusto hb9tza / i2jjr

So it’s 5dB less sensitive at 64MHz. These were with the “Defaults” settings. I would guess that there’s sufficient gain prior to the IF stage such that this wouldn’t be an issue. If you like a bit of extreme soldering, you could always replace the HPF with a 1nF cap.

Is the hard ware schematics open ? I havent seen them posted anywhere. What about the pic’s code ? is it released as well ? or only pre-compiled firmware. What about the API docs ? I see under ‘Downloads’ that its under construction, any eta by chance ?

I suggest that you also check the example source code to learn how to program the unit, there are a number of examples. It is a standard USB HID interface, so first you will need to understand about USB HID.

The basic programming technique is to send a 64 byte HID command packet and receive a 64 byte HID response packet. The first byte of the command packet is the command itself, and command specific parameters follow. In response, the first byte is a success/fail followed by comand specific responses.

by a disease I could not not run my tests on.
Tonight I have the FCD retested. He does not work properly.
When I plug it into the PC the communication with the Frequency Control V2.0 is ok.
All settings are correct in Spectravue.
Perhaps from 10 trials is one or two times the chance to receive a signal. The receiving ends after a short time in a squeaking, about 500 Hertz. In the other time nothing happens and it is also nothing to hear .
I would like to send the FCD for the analysis and repair. Please send me your address via email.
73, Michael – DL3YCW

Hi Howard. I’ve had my FCD a few days now, and have written some very rudimentary Mac OS X software that allows me to set the frequency and demodulate FM. I’m fairly confident in the frequency control, but the demodulation is not working at all.

In numerous places you refer to “standard soundcard quadrature I/Q.” I don’t know what this is (I’ve never done this stuff before). I worked from the assumption that the left audio channel is I samples, and the right audio channel is Q samples, and wrote code to demodulate based on the information in this article: http://www.nonstopsystems.com/radio/article-sdr-is-qs.pdf

But all I get is unintelligible noise that saturates the output.

Can you please verify for me how the data is provided in the audio stream? Thanks!

That is exactly what you get, I can’t remember which way round it is, but yes, I goes to one channel and Q to the other. Under the hood I provide standard USB audio at 96kHz sample rate, two channel, 16 bits/sample as per the USB spec (http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs/audio10.pdf)

Typically you would also downconvert in software on the host: although in some circumstance you can use the zero IF and direct downconvert in hardware, bear in mind that as well as a DC offset (that you can calibrate out) there is also LO phase noise (that you can’t). By doing a second downconvert on the host with a software NCO and mixer from an arbitrary position either side of the hardware LO, you avoid the hardware limitations around the zero IF.

Hey, Howard, thanks for the reply! I forgot I had posted here (kept expecting an email). I just now read this (after the last two emails I just sent you).

Thanks for the information. I’m downloading that software now, but I’ve been having so much fun writing my own I want to continue. I’m running up against serious knowledge limits, though, so hopefully I will find a good source of information to help me through (scaling my FFT display, etc.)

Hi Howard
I set up the dongle with Spectravue and input 100mhz
on the FCD controller software but can only get a noise floor of about -80db without an antenna. With an aerial, usually strong local frequencies were very weak (in the noise) and also very distorted. I’ve checked the rest of the Spectravue Configuration and I think it’s set up ok, so not sure what I’m doing wrong.
Grateful for any help. Many thanks.
Alan

First off, what is the difference in noise floor with and without the antenna when tuned to an empty channel? If it’s more than 5 or 10dB you’re seeing some desense from out of band signals. At VHF the FCD only has a limited set of filtering, at UHF and above it has more selective bandpass filtering. You can improve things by reducing mixer and LNA gains (counter intuitive I know). Otherwise, you may be suffering from another potential strong signal, often in the UK it’s pagers around 138 and 153MHz. If pagers are your problem and reducing the unit’s gain doesn’t improve things on VHF, you may need to consider some other means of front end filtering – exactly what that is depends largely on what you want to achieve with your FCD. There are some 2m options I’ve already documented on here http://www.funcubedongle.com/?p=456.

Second, if you are trying to demodulate band 2 FM broadcasts, they’re a tad too wide for the FCD’s bandwidth so they will be distorted.

You might want to try joining the FUNcube Yahoo group where there’s also plenty of extra help if I happen to have my head glued to a microscope as I have for the past few days.

is the Funcube dongle can work with virtual audio cable ?
can be seen here http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htm
the idea is to be able to get the FunCube dongle decode out to enother Software such as SSTV RTTY WXSAT etc ….. that they also use the soundcard as their input …
And if yes how to do it …?
Thanks Forward
Ronen

Yes VAC can be used with the FCD, Join the support group here,http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/funcube/
Many people are using the VAC with great success.
Just repost your question within the group.
good luck.

I’m hoping to monitor l-band satellites and though (IIRC) your frequency gap would be right below gps I’m wondering if it can be moved further down?

Also, good job, the only other products that are equivalent to yours are the icom pcr devices. I would say each device seems to have its own use case. I think I like this device more because it is open and I think I might be able to get a wider band for psk work.

The tuner will cover the L1 1.575GHz signal but will not the L2 frequency at 1.227GHz. Either way, although the tuner will cover it, I think that you will be restricted by the FCD’s bandwidth. I believe GPS transmits in Mbps but the FCD’s bandwidth is only about 85kHz.

Now that the WrPlus is gone (it became a Commercial Software and there is no download availe there anymore) What software is recommended that can competit with it ? I need a software that the Tunning of the FCD will be within the software and there will be able to do Up/DOWN with mouse or arrows …

You should take a look at the uWSDR software that I wrote for another project. If I can get a Dongle then I’ll create a driver for it for both Linux and Windows. It already includes point-and-click and mouse wheel tuning, as well as other methods.

For people running windows 7 – the audio gain settings hidden in the mixer control need to be set to 1.

Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Devices and Printers then right click on Funcube Dongle V1.0 and select “Sound Settings”. go to the recording tab, Select the FCD which appears as a microphone. Go to the levels tab. Set the gain to 1.

Robert, now you’re working, as it were, you might find that the SMPS in the PC is inadequately RF suppressed. One has read reports of cheap PSUs with the filtering components missed off in the factory!
73
Robin

Hi Howard.I would just like to say that ,i am one of the lucky one to have a Funcube Dongle Number 910.From the sale on April the 3rd.It came on Tuesday all ok.I set it up with Spectrvue and the front end loader ,all ok and it worked fine for about 2 hours.Then it stopped with no niose floor and it will not pickup anything.I have tryed a firmware update and it still will not do anything.I have tryed plugging it into the usb port without a usb cable and into another usb port on my notebook which is running windows 7,but still not workingAlso i have found that the SMA conection is very warm and the case also.I think it may be faulty.
Your help would be appreciated .

I just received my FunCube today. I have loaded FCHID and Spectravue. I set the input to Spectravue to be the dongle and the output of Spectravue to the default soundcard and no joy. No noise, Nothing. Very disappointing.

Sorry you are having difficulties: I can assure you that I test _every_ FCD personally for both functionality and performance just prior to sending them out. Please send me an email with some screen shots of your config and we’ll work this out for you.

Howard,
Mea culpa! I missed a simple thing on the PC XP virtual machine. I normally run only OSX but followed the “first time user” suggestion in the documentation. It is working great, so again, sorry for the post. This little jewel is gonna be fun.

Hi,
just wondering – is the gap between 1.1 and 1.27 likely to be eliminated in any future version of the dongle? Is it something say two xtals would fix if its something along the lines of the pll not having enough N or R divide ratio?

One of my interest areas is the evaluation of applications running under various OSes. The application Qthid works well at controlling the FCD but I haven’t found many applications for receiving and processing the complex data from it. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I am sure that you will find better answers than mine in the Yahoo FUNcube group.

Personally I have used LINRAD on Linux (Ubuntu 10.10), and DSP Radio on the Mac. In addition you will find that Alex Csete’s version of QTHid is much better than mine, and I believe he releases binaries so you don’t have to build from source.

You may like to check on the FUNcube Yahoo group for the best answer to this. I am aware that WRplus will do but it appears that has very recently changed it licensing model. I believe that there is some work on GNU Radio integration too.

Hi Howard
I bought FDC 849 on April 3. I would like to use funcuben to receive faxes. My problem is I can not get enough sound out to fax software.
Wxtoimg requires a sound pressure of about 70, I can get 50, which is too low.
Aptdekoder require that sound pressure is about -5 db –8dB I can achieve approximately -20 and also not enough.
I’ve obviously been in and put the sound pressure to the highest in both recording as a playback. I can mute the sound, but not increase beyond that described.
I’ve tried funcube directly and tried virtual audio cable, without it has helped.
Can funcube give too low an output to a PC, can it be increased.

I am not sure about wxtoimg, it’s not something I have used, and I am not sure what modulation mode you are using. Typically there will be something between the FCD and wxtoimg, like Spectravue for example. That will have an AGC in it for AM and SSB, and for FM it will use a limiter. The output of that I assume is what you’re referring to?

If so you might want to check the audio settings for your sound input: I don’t know what OS you’re using?

or you can try Mscan,Wefax. I find the levels using VAC are quite low.
I find the audio levels from the FCD are fine, but are attenuated by the SDR software. I find best results, running a jack lead from speaker out to mic in.
anyway good luck.
Rob

hey rob
thanks for your advice I’ll try to lead from out to in.
My understanding is that you also have detected a little low sound pressure from funcube (for use with fax software) I hope that maybe it will change in coming firmvare ver. if possible.
Blew recommended wxsat on this site, but when I use win7 64 bit operating system, the software can not run.
Looking forward to our little discussion here, might stir up some of the really tough users to upload a setup instructions for one of the free fax receiving programs.
FDC looks exciting and I messing much with my FDC, but not without problems.

Can you please provide some information on the bias available from the FCD’s SMA connector, for example, voltage and current limit. Additionally, I have looked into turning this bias (looking into the SMA port with a voltmeter) on using Qthid but without success.

FWIW, I’ve built a particular antenna with an integral LNA and would like to power the LNA remotely. I’m hoping I don’t have to build another bias tee and use an external DC power supply.

The bias T is 5V and should comfortably deal with up to 100mA. There is a protection circuit in there which will trip if it sees a DC short when switched on based on a PTC resettable fuse, Tyco part number FEMTOSMDC016F-02, which trips at 400mA and has a hold current of 160mA (although in tests I found the hold current to be a lot less, perhaps 60mA). The driving transistor is rated at 1A.

To use the functionality you need the 18h firmware and matching front end software (FCHID008) which has a check box to switch the bias T on and off. This is available via the FUNcube Development Yahoo Group.

I have just gotten a program (at least start) to work which connects a FCD with Igor , a powerful data processing and visualization program. Some views can be seen at: and which show screen shots taken of W0UPS-5, the APRS (Automated Packet Reporting System) repeater operating at 144.390 MHz by the NCARC (Northern Colorado Amateur Radio Club). The first screen shot shows a 9600 BAUD burst and the second an as-yet-undetermined wider bandwidth burst. Not all of the controls on the panel are operational at this time but I’m working on it.

Hy
my APRS signal are on 144.815 and not 144.800
on 70cm out local FM repeater is 439.348 MHz and not 439.300
on 23cm it could be then 120kHz … i didn´t test that
In what way i can change that “shift”
Is there an SDR prg with vbariable filters to “hear” all 80Khz in FM
Like Wide FM or narrow FM ?

for Windows thre is a nice program called Sodira , quite difficult to make the Setup , but perfekt for WFM. It can decode Stereo , but for RDS witch is inpemented the bandwide of the FCD ist to small .

For your Ofset you can correct on FCDHID , QTHID and The DLL too

73 de Alfons DG8YHH

ps : if you need further Help please contact me via Mail direct ( it´s simple to do this in German 😉 )

With my FCD, periodically (every 8 seconds or so) a bunch of samples seem to be dropped, as if the ADC is slightly faster than the USB link, causing a buffer to overflow periodically. This is very noticeable with a constant carrier at the input. It happens with different computers, different Linux versions, also at 48 kHz samplerate, and also with the 18h firmware. Others (in the yahoo group) have confirmed the same problem.
Is the cause of this problem known? Is there a remedy?

I have heard of this before, and historically I have assumed it was due to a mismatch in real sampling rates between the soundcard used for playback and the FCD causing the discontinuity. However I am not at all certain of this: I haven’t been able to reproduce the fault myself, although to be fair I am 95%+ in Windows.

I am in the middle of moving house at the moment so I won’t get an opportunity to look at this under Linux until next week I am afraid. Can you let me know your software setup you’re using with the FCD?

I see the problems with a nameless “normal” SDR program and the WebSDR server program, both written by myself.
Given the structure of these programs, I’m pretty sure the playback soundcard does not cause the problem. In the case of the WebSDR, the ticks are visible in the server-generated waterfall diagram, while the playback soundcard is at the client and can’t influence the server’s timing.
I’ve also seen the phase jumps by recording the data and then plotting it, so with no playback soundcard involved.
Comments in the yahoo group suggest the problem is not limited to Linux.
If I can do any further tests or provide information to help you debug this, please let me know.
73, Pieter-Tjerk, PA3FWM

I just got my FCD set up this weekend, tested with SpectraVue on Windows, and updated to 18f firmware. I now have the Qthid program working on my Mac. Can anyone recommend a Mac OSX alternative to SpectraVue?

Hi Howard,
Thanks for your reply!I have followed the Spectravue Configuration etc,and my checks reveal the first diagram ,ok at the top ie Sound Card in setup,but below I am still showing “Center Freqency,no filters etc.In addition the Data Output selection shows RF Data to Wave File,instead of Demod to Wave File? So something is
adrift somewhere? Can you help please? Derek G6IVE

What is the current cost of the FCD going on sale today in USA $?
What kinds of payments are acceptable?
Is it OK to order multiple units (for friends)?

I have been designing antennas for “free to the air HDTV” use for the last 2 years.
Several designs will be posted soon on my forthcoming webpage. My best working design is a 14 element double log periodic design that has 6 elements on the VHF Channels and 8 elements on the UHF Channels, single feed line. It has an extremely clean pattern especially needed on digital signals. I used to get 7 Analog TV channels ..Now I get as many as 32 perfect digital channels….

I have 2 versions…The outdoor version uses a pair of 1″x 3.5′ square booms, and has 28 threaded rod 1/2 elements. The indoor version is made from 2″ thick double foil faced Styrofoam. Elements are made by cutting away the unneeded foil.

I have never heard of a circular polarized log periodic, but a tri-band circular polarized log periodic would really be great for narrow band Ham HDTV into a FCD. ….

Dongle #1833 arrived Monday 5th July and by yesterday (Friday) I had it running natively in my Delphi console, which was written back in 2003 to operate the FlexRadio SDR-1000 transciever. It’s fully functional including frequency stepping with the mousewheel, PLL lock indicator, setup panel for all the little tweaks and a button to reset to firmware upgrade mode. Four days to write a new hardware driver must be some sort of a record, but excitement about the possible uses drove the project forward.

I can now seamlessly listen to everything from 100kHz to 2.17GHz in one program and as this is my first foray into the realms above the 6M amateur band there’s plenty to discover.

It is true that at present there is not the volume of software for the Mac that is available under Windows or Linux, although I do think that there is at least one individual/group currently working on new Mac host software.

Hello,
I’d like to use the Fun Cube or some similar device for experimenting with direct link (no satellite) transmission.

Is it possible to use the Fun Cube as transmitter as well, and if not are there any other devices (not the USRP, I can’t afford that), that could be used as transmitter or transceiver with a variable frequency range from about 200 MHz to about nearly 1 GHz, which allow to do the (de)modulation completely in software?

Hi Howard,
Finally had enough time to get the unit working. Seems to have a very high background noise level, -60dB but otherwise works as well as an old Kenwood TH-78 on VHF. Any ideas what might be the cause of the high background. Removing the RF input has no effect (few dB’s). Reducing the front end RF gain reduces the noise by the same amount. Sometimes when inserted I see the background noise at -110dB but then the unit is not working. Re-connection usually does the trick but the background noise then is back to approx -60-70dB. Same on other computers including laptops. Cheers, Andy

We do have plans for other devices in the pipeline but they’re very much at the early design stage: we have been concentrating on getting on top of the production schedule first before spending too much time on other ideas.

I have not tried this myself, but you could take the Clock out (either pin 24 or 23) from the Tuner QFN of one unit, and send it to the XTAL in (pin 28) of the other, removing the crystal of course in the second unit.

After I have tried to demonstrate the dongle on a field day, It is not working properly.
My S-meter is sky high and Spectravue is telling me to reduce If gain.
Even if I reduse al the gain to 0db, it stays the same.
Strong signals are still coming thru but not as good as it was.
I have tried a different computer and a longer USB cable

Hi there does anyone know assuming That a quicker ADC will be in the Funcube what is the maximum BW the Software will be able thorough the USB ? is there any limit bigger then 98KHZ ?
Thanks Forward
Ronen – 4Z4ZQhttp://www.ronen.org

Hello,
i received my fcd and it is great. the only problem i have is that in the 60 mhz range the frequency is about 5 khz wrong, in the 144 mhz range the error is about 20 khz.
Is there any way to adjust it?
Thanks,
Frank

Of course, there is an adjustment facility in the FCHID program called “frequency correction” which work in parts per million (ppm). For serial numbers over 810, generally 999988 is a good start. For older serial numbers, about 999885 is about right.

my FCD has suddenly stops working, the PC still detects the dongle but there is no communications with the programs that i use on two different pc’s. Nothing has changed in my set-ups. When i start HDSDR i get a lot of noise with a signal-strenght of S9+40 dB with spikes all over the screen. It also feels much warmer than before. It is serial #603 and has working perfectly till now.

When i start HDSDR i get a CW-message witch sayes BOOTLOADER, when i try to set the frequency with FCHid it says that i can not set the frequency and i can’t reset to bootloader. The dongle is detected as USB -device but i can’t get any connection with it.

it updated the FCD already a while ago en it worked without any problem till now, it just stopped working while i was listening to Arissat-1. Suddenly i had a lot of spikes all over the spectrum monitor screen and the S-meter stays in the right corner, even without antenna

i updated the FCD already a while ago en it worked without any problem till now, it just stopped working while i was listening to Arissat-1. Suddenly i had a lot of spikes all over the spectrum monitor screen and the S-meter stays in the right corner, even without antenna

It seems I do have the same issue here: the dongle suddenly got stuck in bootloader mode after month of faithful service . erasing and reflashing code to version 18i does not solve the issue. It is not a mechanical problem.

thanks for your mail, i already prepared the dongle for shipment, tomorrow it goes in your direction. Yes i heard that the dongle was sending “bootloader” in CW and try to get it out of the boatloader position but i was unsuccesfull, i also thinks that there will be an HW-fault.
Thanks again and best greetings,

Hi howard,
i read a lot about that little “thing” great job done .
i thought about HF reception .. shure an upconverter will be fine.
that could be externaly connected .. but need maybe some preselection/tuning according the receiving Frequency.
Why not to activate the converter creating a DC-bias of 0,5 – 5V while the voltage level reflects the target frequency
this could be coupled to the antenna connector with a impedance of maybe 10k as there is no real power needed on that controll signal.
Maybe one of the audio out could be abused for generating a controllable DC level

I thought I would try posting here as well as in the user group. I see other people have had the bootloader mode problem, and I also now have a low gain problem.
I think I need a return address to you for repairs. What is your policy on this?

message continues:

I wrote about an intermittent fault which I decided in the end was due to a
faulty SMA adaptor. However, the fault has now got worse – probably because of
accidental disconnections when live and it falling on a hard floor with a stiff connector on the front which bent the SMA – now repaired (?) and I am having problems with the FCD (#438) being recognised at all. I get this message from FCHIDBL:

Sometimes it says it is in bootloader mode, but wont reset to normal, giving the
previous message. When in bootloader mode, the firmware verifies OK (version
18i).

Operating with the cover off, sometimes the red LED comes on and sometimes not.
The USB connector seems to be intermittent, although I have re-soldered the
connections.

I eventually managed to get the FCD in a state where SDR-Radio was recognising it again, but any movement of the device can disconnect it and sometimes cause the
application to crash nastily, whereas sometimes a simple disconnect and
reconnect from within SDR-Radio is OK. However, the FCD is usually then in
bootloader mode and has to be physically disconnected again before it will
behave.

However, that’s not the last of my problems – it now has very little
gain – several 10’s of dBs down, so it seems there is a front end fault as well.

No problem, I’ll email you have a return address. When you send the device, once I receive it I’ll see if it’s repairable or if not I’ll send a replacement. If you email me a tracking number for the unit ahead of time, I’ll send you a replacement straight away.

I tried this recently. Using the camera adapter directly unfortunately the iPad 2 is restricted to only 20mA in the latest iOS, it was 100mA before. Even so, the FCD requires ~140mA anyway. I also very briefly tried it with a powered hub and iSDR but iSDR did not recognise it. I have seen reference to iOS only supporting up to 48kHz sampling rate but I am not sure if this is still the case.

I also tried the FCD on an Acer A500 which has an integrated USB host type A connector. It powered and seemed to recognise the device, but there is no SDR software for Android that I’m aware of.

Feel free to experiment: my tests were very cursory, I am sure there is more experimentation to do.

I’m interested in buying a funcube pro dongle from amsat uk as i want to try reception of EME signals in the higher bands. Now i’m using an old IC821 only for EME on 2m.
Is the receiver good for 23cm reception or not? I want to set up a dish with a 23cm feed.
Can i mount the dongle straight to the antenna and use a USB extender via UTP cable to the computer? so a preamp will be not needed anymore…
thanks for your great project
Best 73 from ON5GS

Certainly this is possible. I have run the FCD over a length of 20m total using a mixture of active and passive extenders. A UTP USB extender should be OK, although it is not something I’ve tried. The FCD only uses USB 1.1 Full Speed (12Mbps).

Bear in mind that although the FCD is sensitive, realistically the front end noise figure of the FCD is unlikely to match that of state-of-the-art band specific preamps.

rrr tnx fer info Howard,
I ordered a dongle from the shop in Surrey and awaiting delivery. ON6ZG has also a dongle and he says i need a steep bandpass filter, so i will search for a good design and make one.
I have no experience with software defined radios but as i have experimented with the Eindhoven 2m SDR online receiver, i bet it will be a very very big improvement to acually SEE the whole band, and that for such a tiny little thing it’s almost unbelievable. Thanks for sharing the UFB project and the laibour you put into it, as i seen the movie you handsoldering the SMD components in your kitchen, best 73 ON5GS

I have purchased the funcube under transaction 13730484DG882115J.. I would like to know what the cost would be to upgrade this to the pro before you send out. Please use address posted above for relpy’s.

Hello, i wounder if it´s possible to have several Funcubs to one computer. I was thinking to have it to monitoring Pocsag in PDW. Are a Funcube lika a Soundcard thats shows up in programs like pdw and so or?

Yes you can place as many FCDs as you like into a computer, however the software controlling it needs to be able to support that, and I am not sure if there is any software currently that does. You may find a better answer to that on the FUNcube Yahoo group from some of the software writers.

i have a qustion sir … it is stupid qustion
this dongel recive the radio from sattalite ?? or from the air ??
i mean can i listen to the local fm commercial and air band in my area ?
i am from egypt and want to order one do you think that customs or the import authority in my country will impound it???
it is look like a normal usb dongel ….

The FCD doesn’t know whether the signal is from a satellite or it’s terrestrial. Although it was originally designed for satellite reception, it will receive any narrow band signals. It will receive terrestrial FM radio but it is somewhat distorted becuase the bandwidth of a broadcast FM signal is a little too wide for the FCD. It has no problem with air band as they are narrow band signals. It does look like a TV dongle that you might use for picking up TV transmissions.

thank you sir for your reply …. i am soory i have another qustion….
what about the performance of the FCD in the terrestrial VHF-UHF ???
i mean :-
2M Amateur Band – VHF High Band/Emergency Services – VHF High Band/Marine –
VHF High Band/Taxis, Utilities – Military Air Band – 70cm Amateur Radio – 23 cm Amateur Band – UHF PMR Paging, PMR446
i mean from 108 – 950 MHZ with normal antenna (without any modification)….

The FCD will receive all of those services. Depending of your location and the type of antenna you use, you may find that at VHF in particular the receiver parameters may need adjusting to reduce blocking, as the front end filtering on VHF is limited. In some strong signal circumstances, addiitional front end filtering is advantageous.

I am not sure what service runs between 300 and 400MHz. Remember that the FCD is designed for narrow band modes only, but other than that its demodulation capabilites are limited only by the software that’s written for it.

300 – 400 MHz in the UK is the military UHF air traffic control band. I should advise that it is an offence under the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 2006 to receive radio transmissions of which you are not the intended recipient.

Dear Howard, I have a little problem. In Windows XP SP3 Home Edition , in the Control Panel/Sound and Audio Devices , is not possible to regulate the microphone gain of Funcube Dongle.
In Windows 7 I don’t have this problem.
Do I need particular driver? Thanks. 73 de Claudio iz1dby.

The XP audio stack operates in fixed point and there is no host side software gain facility. Other audio devices that provide a gain facility do so by providing an interface to a variable gain audio amplifier on the audio device itself.

The Vista & W7 audio stack operates in floating point and provides this functionality “out of the box” without the need for any facility on the audio device. I recommend setting the FCD mic volume to “1” and leaving it there. Any other adjustments should be done in the SDR program or with the FCHID program.

Either way, you can adjust the multitude of gain settings for the FCD with the FCHID program.

Hello, why in a range 1200-1266 MHz there is failure PLL? At this moment “PLL lock” it is not marked in program FCHID006 if to use ExtIO_FCD_G0MJW result identical. The firmware version v18i, with other versions the same result. Excuse for bad English.

It’s a limitation of the tuner chip to do with its VCO range and subsequent divider after the PLL. I’m afraid it’s just not possible to lock the PLL/VCO with the possible PLL combinations around these frequencies. It’s documented as a limitation right at the top of this FAQ.

Hi
I am looking for a universal receiver and funcubedongle might be it.
My main use with be to listen for signals from my home security system, weather-station, baby alarm and other things like that. So I am guessing I will be doing a lot of work in the 300-900Mhz range and be using ASK and FSK.
Can the funcubedongle receive these signals and can the software “decode” ASK and FSK?
Best regards
db

Yes it can recieve any narrowband signal. The FCD does not provide any demodulation or decoding itself: that is performed on the host computer by third party software. It is common to take the output of narrowband demodulator software like Spectravue and feed that into a decoder like MixW. As long as there is a soundcard decoder available for your coding scheme, it will work with the FCD.

I have not tested the device to destruction. There is a BAV99 diode on the RF input. So far I have only had one production unit back (out of over 3,500) with a fried LNA, but judging by the physical state of the LNA in question, that looked like rather more than just an antenna had been connected to it!

I finally got a Funcube, and I’m going to modify my ARISSat-1 demodulator to work with it. But I was a little dismayed to read in this FAQ that the frequency-setting application hasn’t been ported from Windows to Linux or Mac OSX.

Is this still true? Is the interface for setting the frequency published somewhere?

I regularly use both OSX and Linux and develop primarily on the latter. I refuse to develop on or for Windows (though I don’t mind if others port my code), and I only run Windows maybe once a year when some application gives me no other choice.

See the link in the downloads section about Alex’s QTHid update. I originally wrote a Qt version to run on Linux and OS X. It was a bit flakey around the HID interface. I believe Alex has fixed that now.

The default setting (once you’ve updated the firmware!) sets the gain so that the LNA noise floor level just creeps above the ADC noise floor. It’s a hard value determined empirically some months ago that seems to work in most situations. You can of course fiddle with all these settings yourself with Alex’s QTHID program.

The noise floor on my new FunCube dongle is -60 dBm, which seems very high. With everything variable set to the lowest level, it is still above -70 dBm. Local FM radio stations are almost impossible to hear. The strongest one comes in audibly but very distorted. Local 2 meter repeaters are inaudible. A $10 FM radio does much better.

Some questions from this point:
1. What are parameters of LPF’s and BPF’s ? Did you do any measurements?
2. Is it possible in a future firmwares customize filters.
I am interested to filter out FM broadcast when I listen to airband (108-137), weather satellites (137-138), 2M band river 300-360 MHz band and others.
3. If yes, which parameters is possible to get from these filters? I mean bandwidth and rejection out of band?
4. When I set frequency in range from 869 MHz to 1000 MHz, filter automaticaly switches to group 2 bandpass – 1700 MHz. Why? I use latest firmware 18i.

The filters are set as specified by the tuner manufacturer’s data sheet.

The filters are a hard list provided by the tuner chip manufacturer, there is no documentation on how to adjust them beyond the list provided.

For VHF, there are only low pass filters so you cannot preselect within the VHF band itself other than with the broadband low pass filters provided. There is also a hardware high pass filter with a ~55MHz cutoff in front of the front end.

I beleive there is a bug in the firmware where the incorrect filter is selected around 869MHz.

Hi There
has anyone had a success in operating the FunCubeDongle with wrplus on windows 2000 ?
if yes how ?
the program show up ok but when i press Start nothing happened ….
no spectrum analyzer no noise nothing
with hdsdr it works ok
any help comments welcome
Thanks Forward
Ronen – 4Z4ZQhttp://www.ronen.org

Can anyone advise me on how to get the output of Funcube Dongle to go
into the input of one of the SDR programs? For example, Spectravue? I can start
Spectravue but “Input select” does not include Funcube. I can hear the output of Dongle (hissing gibberish, presumably because it’s not demodulated) if I select Funcube in the Windows 7 audio control panel. Linux would be fine, too (preferred).

You would need sequenced coax relays at both ends of your coax to use a single feedline on the same frequency. You could make the switching work by using bias tees in the coax also at both ends to pass the DC. This could also power a remote preamp.

Howard, is it possible for the FUNcube dongle to use more than one reciever software so you can hear multiple signals or frequency bands at the same time in a similar way the HPSDR using the FPGA chip to create multiple receivers? I know the dongle is not as complex as the HPSDR project but wondered if it was expandable at a future date.

Managed to set up my new dongle last night without an antenna and following the getting started guides and installing software on my Vista Ultimate OS Laptop and hitting a few known bugs including not finding the dongle with qthid, but will soon start playing around with it in real time, thanks for a great piece of technology, saves frying frontend electronics with RF from our transceivers when we forget these is something else at the end of our coax cable than just an antenna, lol.

If the host software is written appropriately, then yes, it is possible support multiple FCDs. I am not aware of any software that does that: it would need to carefully enumrate the USB ports and match sound cards to do so.

I´m using the FCD since december 2011, I´m satisfied, but: the WFM broadcast signal of public radiostations ist rather distorted! On the air-bands the signals are rather weak and there is a whistle all the time. I´m working here with a small indoor antenna for 2m band. I´m using win7 (32) and spectraview or sdr-radio.com
With sdr-radio.com the squelch on the airband does not work.
Maybe I´m using wrong setup (filters and so on); to recieve better ais-signals I have change the lna from +20 db to 0db.

The FCD is really designed for narrow band reception, and so reception of wide band FM (WFM) will sound somewhat distorted as the bandwidth of the signal is wider than the FCD’s passband.

I am not sure about the whistle – you should be attempting to receive away from the centre of the passband where there is a residual DC component to the signal. If you are working with a small indoor antenna, you should try to place the antenna away from your computer. Either us a USB extension cable, or a few metres of coax. This will reduce the RF that is generated by your PC being picked up and interfering with reception.

I would usually recommend reducing the mixer gain first before reducing the LNA gain.

Regarding SDR Radio, that is not a product that I usually use with the FCD: you will almost certainly find an answer to this on the FUNcube Yahoo group though, where there are a lot of SDR Radio users.

thank´s a lot for your information! Our FM-Radio bandwith ist 100 khz (hope I´m right), so there remaining 4 khz… 😉
I will try to improve the antenna-situation; I´m already using a longer usb-cable (60 inch), small antenna and FCD is approx. 2 meters away from pc (notebook). I´ll try with another setup in lna and mixer -gain. If I get better results, I´ll report for the other users…

Hi, Got the FCD before Christmas, and is easy to set up and use – even for a complete beginner like me.

This is a complete numty question, but hope you can give a bit of guidance. I bought the FCD to use for radio astronomy projects – nothing fancy, just detecting the sun as demos for public. Now I have a small satellite dish that may work – but the LNB needs ~12V down the wire to provide power. Should I be concerned about putting the other end of the antenna wire (12V + small signal) into the FCD, or do I need another bit of kit? I’m more an amateur astronomer than amateur radio

You need an external bias tee. The bias tee in the FCD only supplies 5V up to about 50mA, so it’s probably of no use for LNBs.

A bias tee for this purpose would typically consists of a capacitor (about 100 to 1000pF) to pass through the RF and isolate the DC, and an inductor to take the DC and LNB control signal. Probably a resttable fuse would be recommended too, it’s all too easy to accidentally short coax!

Hello i recentley was bought a fcd by my grandchildren after retiring i have returned back to radio after 40yrs those days all ex wd equipment i have many radios here icom kenwood the old trio and alinco.My question is please tell me how to get the fcd running in laymans terms i have sdr installed and tried to get the freeware but no joy please help otherwise the only solution is letting my newfoundland dog using it as a miniabone please adam and elsa the dog

As well as the documentation on this website in the Downloads section, there are also some excellent user guides in the files section of the FUNcube Yahoo group that many people use: let me know how you get on with them.

My FCD (Serial 0003463) has quite a big frequency error, which increases with rx frequency: 14 kHz at 145 MHz, approx. 40 kHz at 440 MHz, tested with the Windows frontend and with gqrx under Linux. I use the latest firmware.

Can this be a hardware problem or is it possible to correct it with firmware?

Demodulation and decoding occurs on the host PC, not on the dongle. so if software exists or is written to demodulate/decode, and it will fit into the FCD’s ~85kHz passband (ie, it’s narriowband), then it can do it.

There shouldn’t really be any relationship between the playback soundcard sampling rate and that of the FCD’s integrated sampling rate, assuming that the host software is capable of resampling (which any one worth its salt should be able to achieve as typically the OS can do this for you anyway).

QUISK will happily run the FCD under Ubuntu. I have prepared a set of instructions which detail the necessary configurations. If you’d like them drop me an email to the address to be found at qrz.com (you may need to register for this).

As I read through, I see that many folks want to extend the funcubedongle device on a longer USB cord. The benefits from extending the data cord, instead of the coaxial cable to the antenna, are obvious… Active and passive hubs and cords have been described. Has anyone considered a computer network device known as a USB server? It is a powered device that connects a USB device like a thumb drive, printer, or external disk drive on a USB cord, to an Ethernet network. A very long ethernet UTP network cable would then be possible. Note that the dongle device transfers data at USB 1.1 rates (slow) so 10BASE-T networking would likely be fine. I think one of my cat5 ethernet cords is one hundred feet long, all passive, and it works great. Or a short cat4 cable to a wireless router! Look at http://www.usb-server.com/usb-redirector.html for some ideas, or look at IOgear’s model GUWIP204, Wireless Device Server, which has one RJ-45 10/100Base-TX TCP/IP Network jack, and four Type A USB jacks…
or look on ebay, one “store” is izenet_store, that seller has an “Adapter Network Server on Router for All USB Devices” … these devices claim to be able to turn any USB bidirectional data stream into TCP/IP packets. They mention support of “USB speakers” as well as the expected scanners, printers, and mass-storage devices. I don’t own a funcubedongle OR a USB server yet… but the idea of putting a funcubedongle at the antenna feed point, followed by a bit of cat5 UTP and a water-proofed wireless router… you can send email to me using my callsign, through the ARRL email reflector.

I have not investigated USB Servers, but I will take a look. I have run up to about 30′ using a mix of active and passive extenders. I believe there are also CAT5/6 extenders, but the ones I’m thinking of are not Ethernet, they just do buffering over the physical twisted pair.

I am not sure how well USB Servers work, especially over wireless, bearing in mind the requirement for continuous streaming, but I’d be interested in any experimental results.

Update – I’ve subsequently confirmed that quisk does support 96kHz capture with 48kHz playback, so I assume spectravue does the same.

I’ve been trying to run quisk on ubuntu 10.04, but I’m getting runtime errors (“unable to access raw bitmap data”). Allegedly this likely to be a ubuntu bug associated with wxwidgets version 2.8. Looks like I’ll have to resort to Windows XP with WinRadHD (now HDSDR I believe) or Spectravue.

I’ve had a quick play with FCD on WinRadHD without an antenna and it seemed to be doing the right things.

I am glad that the sampling rate issue has been resolved using Quisk. You are right, Spectravue doesn’t really mind what the playback sample rate is. There’s a lot of processing that goes on from the orginal raw I/Q to teh final audio, and typically there’ll be downsampling in there anyway.

Regarding your Ubuntu question, you might want to try asking your question in the FUNcube Yahoo group: I am self-confessed as predominently a Windows guy, but I do dabble as necessary in *nix and OSX but only about 5% of my knowledge lies there I am afraid. There are some very knowledgeable folks on the Linux side on that group, far more so than I am!

Am I right in thinking the funcube dongle could be used for weather sat reception, 137-138MHz FM ? decoding by outputing signal to softwate such as WxtoImg ?
(Requires a bandwidth of 40kHz – 50kHz to accommodate the signal itself plus the Doppler effect)
Also intrested in using for Civil / Military Airband use?

Hello ,
I tried to ask a question early feb 2012 about the frequency range of about 1200 to 1300 MHz , where I plan to use the dongle for spacecraft reception as an if receiver donwconverted from 8.4 GHz.The dongle does not recieve in that rangeIs ther a chance that this will be fixed ?
Maybe my firts request did not get through correct , I may have done something wrong sending it.
regards Wolfgang

Sorry I thought I already answered your question a couple of weeks ago, apologies if not. The integrated PLL/VCO/devider chain doesn’t seem to function I’m afraid for LO frequencies around 1200MHz: a more exact range is specified in the FAQ. It’s not something that’s fixable as it’s a hardware limitation within the tuner chip.

Hello
I would be very interested in placing a FUNcube or something similar on top of a mountain where i also have my ADSB-receiver. I receive my data through a 8 km WLAN using directional antennas. One possibility would be to use an USB Server like Brian mentioned. But it would be much nicer if there would be a TCP/IP-Version of the FUNcube: Less devices = less problems… Is there any possibility that you also build TCP/IP-FUNcubes in the future?
Thanks, Roger

All I can say is that there is a new device in development that might help you, but it is too early to give any promises on timeframes. In the meantime, you could try using a Linux box with gstreamer over RTP for example.

It is necessary that when you write the firmware, no other FCHIDxxx applications are running other than FCHIDBL. They will interfere with the firmware upload, and leave the dongle stuck in bootloader mode.

Is it possible to order an FCD Pro without the Si MMIC LNA installed, i.e. with the input going directly (via a capacitor) to the Elonics tuner IC? (I want to use additional filtering and provide low noise amplification myself, without having an un-adjustable 20 dB gain block in front of the mixer …)

I don’t provide an FCD without the preamp, but it would not be difficult to remove it an provide a link if you have the right SMD soldering tools and relevent experience.

The very first ten or so prototypes had no LNA, but we found that the noise figure at VHF was about 14dB, although it improved to about 5dB or so at UHF, so as you can see you need a fair bit of gain anyway to circumvent the noise figure at VHF.

By the way, you can easily adjust the gain before the mixer from -5dB to +30dB in about ten steps, as well as the mixer gain itself from the FCD HID control program.

Can the FUNcube Pro dongle receive and distinguish between pulsed signals coming from two different VHF transmitters one with 148.056 MHz and the other with 148.256 MHz and pass on the presence of one of these transmitters to an Arduino (AVR MCU) with datalogger? So part of the question is if after an initial setup through a PC it can do a standalone operation connected to an Arduino configuration with power from a battery.

The FCD is a USB device so you need a USB host to be able to use it. If your Auduino supports USB host mode, and you have a USB stack available to support USB Audio and USB HID then you can use the FCD with it.

What is not clear is if you need to be able to be able to simultaneously access the signals at the same time of if you can use time slicing. There is not enough banwidth in the FCD to be able to concurrently monitor signals that far apart as it has a 96kHz sampling rate and your signals are 200kHz apart.

I’m not an Auduino guy, but from a quick look at the Wikipedia page there would be quite a number of limitations to overcome on that platform, not least in real time digital signal processing, and USB host hardware and stack.

Thanks for your answer. With a so called USB Host Shield Arduino can communicate with USB devices. Please have a look here: http://www.circuitsathome.com/usb-host-shield-hardware-manual. I do not need to be able to simultaneously access the signals at the same time. Scanning would be fine to pick up the signals one by one.

Is processing of the signals necessary? I just want to know if a signal of these transmitters at the mentioned frequencies is present or absent.

From a hardware perspective, the Maxim USB host device that they use will support the FCD. What is not clear is whether there is a USB Audio host stack developed for the Arduino, and I should mention this in itself would be a non-trivial task. The HID host looks as though it is already developed.

Detecting whether the signal is present or not depends on the nature of the signal and any other nearby signals. If you’re happy just to check for any signal in a ~90kHz bandwidth then it would be fairly easy to achieve this without any further digital filtering in software. I am not au fait with the Adruino development environment, but any digital filtering or other DSP techniques tends to demand serious number crunching, often precluding 8 bit platforms as a result.

Again your answer is much appreciated. I have tried the funcube pro for detecting my VHF tags. It is great and sensitive. Even without an antenna the pulsing signal is being picked up from 20 cm’s (!).

Yes, I am happy just to check for any signal in a ~90kHz bandwidth. You write: “it would be fairly easy to achieve this without any further digital filtering in software”. My question now is: “how”?

I have also the question how to use the funcube pro remotely. For me it would be perfect to stream the raw data from the dongle through the mobile internet (GPRS/3G) to my PC and check its signal. I see that the SDR-radio software has a remote server. Another option would be to save the raw signal in the field on a disc or SD card and read the logged signal later on.

I noticed from the console of the SDR-Radio software that the funcube only starts to receive the signals from the FCD after a Start command. What is this command? Can it also be given from hyperterminal?

Sorry for too many questions. I am just very happy to see that the FCD works for my purpose.

To detect the presence of a signal within the FCD’s bandwidth, all that would be required is to measue the amplitude of the signal in the time domain, ie the raw samples. This could be a simple as reading, say, 1024 samples at a time, measuring the minimum and the maximum over those 1024 samples, and picking a threshold. You don’t even have to care about the quatrature nature of the signals. The raw samples are signed 16 bit.

However this is super simplistic. I would anticipate that you will have to at the very least do some kind of sanity checking, for example requiring several successive positives.

In the real world I fear you may find that have to resort to some DSP to do some filtering: RF is an unforgiving world, where fishing out signals from the mush of everything else is both a science and an art in itself.

I try to update the firmware of this little gem (arrived promptly last week) but the bootloader does not show an exe file, after unpacking. I see a number of others with unfamiliar extensions. What could be the problem? The control program and Spectravue work like expected=excellent.

Hi,
I got a problem, when I open the Funcube Dongle Frequency Control v2.0, it always display “HIDOpen of Vid_04d8&Pid_fb56 returns 0 Error, FCD not found: is FCD correctly installed?”.
I can’t run Funcube Dongle Bootloader , when I open the file ” export18j.pro.bin ” it always display “File opened File read”, would you tell me what was going on with the dongle.
Thanks
Raymond choi

Hello,
There is a possibility to decode RDS with funcube and SoDiRa.
choose 192 kHz sample rate and WFM modulation and turn RF frequency some kHz steps outside from middle. Then if the signal strong and the modulation is not to strong after some seconds you will have the RDS station name.
Bernd

Howard,
AIS transponders use two different frequencies, VHF maritime channels 87B (161.975 MHz) and 88B (162.025 MHz), and use 9.6 kbit/s Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK) modulation over 25 or 12.5 kHz channels using the High-level Data Link Control (HDLC) packet protocol.
If I have understood your spec correctly FCR be used for reception on both of these channels at the same time. Has anyone had any success with this? If so, is there any consensus about whether FCR is any more sensitive than a commercial maritime radio?
James

Another idea I have is to log the raw data from the FCD to a uSD card. However to do so I need commands to instruct the FCD to start sending its data and to stop those. Also other control commands (e.g. gain) might be necessary. What are these commands?
Also important is to know in what format I need to log/save the data and how I can feed the data later on from the uSD card on my PC to SDR software for processing.

Yes you could do that. The rate of raw data is 384kB/s. The FCD streams on demand as soon as the isochronous endpoint is read, there is no need for any media control as such. If you’ve finished streaming, simply stop reading the isochronous endpoint. The format is stereo 16 bit signed audio at 96ksps as per the USB Audio spec.

The FUNcube Dongle is a very attractive wideband SDR receiver (www.funcubedongle.com). Looking for RF data and characteristics on the Web shows hardly any results except some measurement from users, like FM sensitivity with SINAD. The reputation for a versatile receiver is done, and everyone knows the necessity of RF filters at the funcube’s front end.
This report quantifies the performances of FUNcube Dongle in terms of strong signals handling capability. The measurements are confirmed by blocking level and third intercept point levels.
The second part of this report shows noise figure measurements to complete sensitivity characterization of the FUNcube Dongle.

What about regular non I/Q sound card software (for example MultiPSK, or Spectrogram)? What is the bandwidth then?

Also, is it possible for you to release a version that converts the I/Q stereo data into ordinary data to keep the same wider bandwidth of the I/Q signal, while presenting it to the computer as a single wideband mono signal. In other words make it so that the driver for the device (and thus the computer it is installed on, and any soundcard software on that computer) will “see” it as a mono input, 160khz sample rate, 80khz bandwidth device, INSTEAD OF a 96khz sample rate, 80khz bandwidth, I/Q stereo device (as it currently works as)?

You see, my favorite ham radio digital decoders are MultiPSK and MixW, neither of which handles I/Q signals, and therefore is intended to be operated with a normal stereo or mono input soundcard.

At my school I have a project with the Fun Cube Dongle.
I downloaded the qthid 3.0 and installed QT creator.
I opened QT creator and open the .pro file that’s in qthid3.0 .
When I then build I always get a list of errors in the file fcd.c.

There are no distributors of the FCD outside the EU at present. You can order direct from myself using Paypal and it will be sent by Fedex international express, or from one of the European retailers such as Martin Lynch, http://www.hamradio,co.uk.

Hi,
I am trying to run the FCD on a Windows XP embedded system with the (15 day trial) USB over Ethernet software. XP embedded does not have the drivers pre-installed so I would like to have a file which contains all the necessary files to be able to install the FCD on XP embedded. I tried to use the instructions written by someone else copying the INF and Driver directory but there are more files needed. Does anyone know the location of an zip file or something with the necessary files ?

Thanks in advance,
Ben

(the USB over network software did work well on a Win7 system with Atom dual 1,6 GHz but I would like to run the funcube on a less energy consuming system, that’s why I want it to run on XP embedded)

Hi
I have been happily using the dongle with various applications..
Most dont allow direct control of the dongle so I use FCHID.exe
IMHO two things would greatly improve this program:
Possibility to store all parameters and load them instantly.
Possibility to record the output as a *.WAV file for later use.

Hello Howard?
I received the Funecube last week, thank you.
I try to use it with SDR-RADIO 1.5 build 940, I tuned it on a local FM station but I receive only noise.
I updated the firmware as described here.
Perhaps I did not understand something……I don’t know what to do, if you have some advices I will be very happy.
Thanking you in advance.
Francois

Thank you for a GREAT product! I’ve had my FCD Pro for a couple weeks now and it’s been great – until tonight…
I was using it to monitor a local amateur repeater and used FCHid to change the frequency (as I had been doing) to local air traffic. Suddenly, the entire spectrum gets really busy and the sounds become reminiscent of a strange morse code. Problem is, that isn’t what was on the air. I tried changing the frequency and got:
HIDOpen of Vid_04d8&Pid_fb56 returns 1
Success, FCD found.
HIDSetFreq of 145433 returns 0
Error, FCD frequency NOT set.
It won’t even read the FCD:
HIDOpen of Vid_04d8&Pid_fb56 returns 1
Success, FCD found.
HIDReadRegister returns 0
Error, FCD read register.
Not sure what happened, but it’s unuseable. Can anyone help me out?

I’m interested by funcube dongle for a paticular field: radioastronomy. Is the gap
in the 1,100MHz and 1,270MHz is very bad and don’t allow to cover the hydrogen line? Since i’m just a student I don’t want to buy a complete ham radio that will cost me thousands. And funcube could be a good alternative because it cover few bands in radioastronomy.

The problem with receiving between 1,100MHz and 1,270MHz is due to a limitation with the tuner chip we use, where the VCO, PLL and divider chain don’t quite provide seamless coverage.

The span 1,100-1,270MHz includes the bottom end of the amateur 23cm band including satellite uplink (ie for gound based transmitting, not receiving) and wideband modes such as ATV and packet that the FCD isn’t designed to cover anyway as it’s designed to receive narrowband signals. The narrowband segment of the 23cm band is covered, and was used extensively in testing the FCD at the protyping stage.

The rest is generally assigned to aeronautical navigation and radiolocation.

What are the differances and strenghts of the FCD over the current
Buz of DVB-T. Sticks than use the realtek and ET2000 tuner chips.
Which I beleve can be used in HDSDR for example. They will have a wider
Band to receive FM. Any down sides ?

To me its the firmware and support that makes the FCD what it is
However technicialy what do you think of those devices ?

The FCD was designed for receiving weak narrowband signals, whereas DVB-T sticks are designed for receiving relatively strong wideband signals.

Interestingly enough almost two years ago when I was designed the FCD, I had three or four DVB-T sticks apart looking at how they worked, but the limited ADC capabilities together with the work required for cross platform drivers led me to a completely new design for the USB/ADC interface.

The FCD was designed to work from the start with the plethora of existing SDR packages that have soundcard interfaces, on a range of platforms including Windows, OS X and Linux. There are no additional drivers required for the FCD as the OS has them included.

The FCD has 16 bit depth ADC whereas the DVB-T sticks with the Realtek chips only has an 8 bit depth ADC, giving the FCD a theoretical dynamic range advantage of 48dB based on raw sampling alone, although in practice it’s a bit more complex than that.

In addition, the FCD has an LNA and hardware filter in front of the E4000 to improve VHF reception. The noise figure of a bare E4000 is about 14dB at VHF, whereas an FCD’s noise figure is about 3dB thanks the the LNA.

They’re different devices in the end, each designed for a different target market.

The FCD is AC coupled to the RF section comprising of an ESD diode pair, a high pass filter and then an LNA. However, there is also an internal switchable DC path to form a bias T that places 5V from the USB bus when switched on. It is from an open collector PNP transistor via a 2.2uH inductor.

Hi Howard.
My FCD arrived today, but i need a support.
Im using SDR-Radio, but only noises on speaker.
Im using a Disconne antenna.
I need listen , for example:
133.350Mhz, a Sao Paulo airport, but only noises and a big red trace on the center of spectrum.
Any fine adjust??
Thank you
Joao

Hello Howard.
I want a simple to use scanner, without several adjusts.
I tryed that site, but im confused with the adjusts.
Spectravue works on computer SDR program, or make changes inside of FCD circuit???
For example: When i will install FCD on other computer, i will need make ALL these adjusts again with Spectravue,etc…??
If yes,FCD could come already upgraded.
I put the FCD on other PC with windows 7 and now i have only static.
“””I still wish this device but is very HARD to understand it.”””
I have a ICOM PCR1500 and is very simple to use.
All the articles about configuration dont help me.
The windows shown on step by step, some appear diferent on my PC.
Can you give a little more help?
Thank you.

I recommend getting the FCD working with FCDHID and Spectravue first becuase that’s how I test out every unit before it leaves. That way we can remove any uncertainty over the confiuration of the many software packages out there that now support the FCD. Once that’s achieved, feel free to try other programs that integrate the frequency control with spectrum display and demodulation.

Here are some things to try, all with FCHID and Spectravue, to get you going.

o Set the FCD frequency to 98,300 kHz. This is very close to the fourth harmonic of the reference oscillator inside the FCD. You should see a new peak appear in Spectravue.

o If you change the FCD frequency by 1 or 2 kHz, you should see the peak moving.

o Now try inserting a small piece of wire like a paper clip or a pin into the FCD’s RF connector’s centre. You should see the noise floor rise immediately.

o Now insert your antenna, you should see a change in noise floor – let me know if you do and by how much.

I like to connect my FFT oscilloscoop to the output from the tuner.
This way I hope to have a nice wideband spectrum analyser with a center tuning
done bij the Funcube.
Witch point will be good for connecting the FFT and will this work?

Help,, I got my FCD about two days ago, I’m an electronic tech by trade and semi-computer literate.. kØip

OK, first, I just stuck the FCD into the usb and hope for the best.. loaded HDSDR, no go, ok , get advise, find out I am an idiot !!
so I get the latest copy of exIO_FCD_G0MJW.dll. put it in the HDSDR folder. NOT BETTER, still don’t receive anything.
I selected all the correct setting under options and sound card ..

still no signals,
so I get the three things from the funcube home page
FCHid003.zip,, FCHIDBL001.zip, export18j.pro.bin…
install them, and upgrade per instructions, the 18j file, ALL appears to WORK, at least no error messages.

STILL NOTHING,

So I try the Spectraview (??) and following the “”DUMMYS”” guide from KD5RXT.
not all of that works.. plus my the pip is in the correct postion right under the 48000,, attempting to change the correction freq did nothing.. and the DC offset doesnt even show on the FCHid program like in his document ?? Newer version ??

what seems strange to me is the High S meter reading, about 20 over connected
to my 5/8 wave 2 meter vertical. if I remove the antenna the noise drops
to about s7.. seems high for no antenna ??? this tells me something is going on, but what ?? I have tried on 3 pc’s all running xp, and tried WINRAD same results

ANYWAY I don’t receive anything , ZERO ,,, anyone have suggestions,

I wonder if Howard is going to be at Dayton, I’ll bring my FCD and you can test it??
I am at a loss

Hi Howard,
maybe theres part of the problem its ver 3.23 and it says interface program for RFSPACE inc radios only ???

quick question, If I got the FCD out of the package, installed HDSDR put the exIO_FCD_G0MJW.dll file in the folder, have the proper sound settings in HDSDR, Should it receive something ?

Thanks for your reply, and I wonder if you have a booth at Dayton, if so, I will drop in with my dongle/computer, please advise location at dayton .. I’m in the flea market,, selling junk,,,, OH, I mean stuff everyone needs, HI

Hi,
I am terribly sorry but I accidently killed my FCD Pro with serial number 0809

I was connecting a pre-amp at the antenna input and because it gave more noise than signal I wanted to remove it. Power was applied with a Cinch plug (center = positive, +13,8 Volt) and when removing the Cinch plug I touched the ground with the +13,8 Volt.

Now, the funcubedongle still is recognized as device but it does ignore the antenna input.

Howard, Still no luck, I’m 99.99 sure i have everything set correctly,
what I find funny is the noise floor being so high and the fact it sees noise
when I connect an antenna.??

BUT,, Please, which is better for you,
1. I send the FCD back to you and you can test it ..
or
2. I meet you at dayton, you can either look at my laptop and dongle, or just put the dongle in your computer and see if it works..

SO if you pick #2,, where and when could I meet you, I checked the hamvention exhibitors and don’t find FunCubeDongle ??
please advise, I would love to meet you and get the masters touch !!
my direct email is jcwilson@ida.net
thanks

John,
Did you set the recording volume settings for the Funcube Microphone back to a recording level of 1 ?

Windows sets the recording level at 70 or 100 % and that gave me the 20db over S9 as noise. After setting the recording level back to 1 (windows audio settings) the noise went back to around S2 and I started receiving signals as good as with my IC7000 (and sometimes better on the “out of ham” frequencies.

if I go to the control panel,, pick Sounds and Audio Devices, then pick Audio,
the sound recording (in the middle) the default device is ” FUNcube Dongle V1.0..

the Volume and Advanced buttons are Dimmed (grayed) out ??

when I go to the Voice tab at the top, the Voice recording is the Fun Cube
same thing Vol and Adv buttons are dimmed out .

the hardware tab: the USB audio Device is the Funcube and it says its working properly..

NOW THE INTERESTING PART

I have discovered that this FCD does receive,,, However,,
heres the story..

Several facts: my antenna works great with two other receivers.
the coax has been tested .. all ok

I have a 1 meter piece of coax (RG-400) with an sma on one end, and a male N on the other, using some adapters to connect to my PL-259 from the antenna.

I discovered with NO antenna connected, and using HDSRD I hear the Weather station on 162.55 mhz on 162.574mhz. thats 24kHz off … also when I put a 6 inch copper wire in the so-239 connector the signal gets better, still very weak !

Now the mystery : when I connect an antenna the signal goes away. LIKE GONE !
remember the antenna and all connections are tested with another receiver ??

I wonder if you have Skype on your computer ??
any idea how to turn down the record level ,
any idea why things are 24kHz off, and why the antenna kills the entire thing ??

Shouldn’t be 24kHz off – maybe a couple of kHz or so I would have thought. There should be a frequency corrction option somewhere in your software to correct for this anyway, or, maybe it’s set wrong. For units with serial number >=810, the correction is about 12ppm or so (in FCHID, that equates to 999988 (/1000000).

even if it was receiving on the correct frequency,
that doesn’t explain the antenna mystery .

My personal option of this CUBE is it’s not functional, after trying on three computers with a host of different SDR radio programs, it doesn’t receive. it still could be “headset” errors, but I don’t think so. I know it’s not your fault by this is the cube from hell !!!!!! hi hi

Hi – FC arrived this morning. Thanks for the speedy delivery. I have used FCHid and spectravue for the initial play and all seems ok. I have a question about the frequency display and I’m not sure if this is the right place. I have FC set up as SR 96000 BW 96000 CF 48000 but the frequency displayed seems to be way off what I was expecting.

Playing with PMR446 if I use FCHid to set the freq to 446.070 then from what I can see the CF at 0.0480 works out at 446.028650. At 446.080 I get 446.038650 (slightly cleaned up values) giving a difference of 0.041350 from what I expected. Can this be fixed with Frequency correction? I thought I would ask before I started messing.

Ballpark, for a new FCD (ie, after serial number 810), a good start for frequency correction is 999988, but you can tweak it to get it right. The original FCDs were about 999885, hence the default FCHID setting.

Assuming you have firmware 18j (all serial numbers after 5890 are dispatched with 18j), you can run integrated software like SDR Radio or SDR Sharp directly, but note that you may find you need to install the .Net framework first.

Thank you very much,Howard. I ordered the dongle on 22 May and it arrived here in Brisbane in VK on the 28th, making the journey in only 6 days.
I read the instructions available as downloads from your site and had the receiver running with Spectravue in less than a half hour. Thanks for the excellent service and impressive product.I am hoping that some skilled person develops an interface that allows it to sweep across its frequency range while displaying the spectrum.73 de VK4IS Bill.

Hello,
I have the Funcube since about 2 months now and I try desperately
to listen the air band but I don’t receive anything.
I tried it on many fix ATIS frequencies of different airport but nothing, just noise while I have no problem with an old AOR scanner, do I mistake somewhere ?
I use FCHid and spectravue, it works on local FM band
Thanking you in advance.
Franos

As I undertsand it, you are saying that you can receive FM but not AM signals?

Is this wideband broadcast band FM or narrowband FM signals, or both?

I am wondering if you are trying to demodulate the narrowband AM signals on the zero Hz position. It is usually better to demodulate away from the zero Hz position as you may find that the local oscillator phase noise and/or DC offset is too strong. You can remove the DC offset using the NCO NULL button in Spectravue, but there will still be some residual phase noise.

Thank you for your answer.
Sorry if you don’t understand my question but my English is not so good and it is pretty difficult for me to explain my problem.
I am actually in Thailand, I try to test my Funcube but the only frequencies that I am sure are airport and FM local radio.
I try to say that It works perfectly on FM wide band on local station but when I try on AM Air band I have only noise
When I try the NCO NULL nothing change, I am wondering if the problem can come from Win 7 64 bit
Best regards.
Francois

Just ordered one of these over the weekend (waiting as patiently as possible I might add!), and while I’m interested in bands that are covered by the dongle, I noticed that the E4000 range is 64mhz – 1700mhz with a note here stating it can tune (with sensitivity loss) above 2.0ghz. How high have people pushed the dongle (without any down or up converters)?

e.g. Can the dongle be tuned up to the 2.4ghz WiFi (here in US) band without a down converter?

Thanks Howard for a great product, from the date of order to my door 3 working days WOW, much faster than my local courier delivery. I have been using the Funcube Dongle with SD Radio and it works beautifully. My 6 year old son is amazed by the type of contacts we make and also is keen to “help” when i experiment with the YAGI’s and Moxon. I have had no SAT passes yet, but still early days.
73.

Bought the funcubedongel a few days ago in germany (serial 6066)
Read and seen things about it on the internet and i thought WOW.
But….
I can’t get it working.

Installed it on 3 different computers, tried 3 different antennas , different receiving software (HDSDR,Winrad etc). but it won’t work.
Read all the installations FAQ’s and read papers from other OM’s, but it still won’t work.

What’s the problem (challenge HI)
There is S9 + 20 db noise , still S9 + 10 db noise WITHOUT antenna
There seems to be no signal coming in (UHF,VHF all frequencies/all modes).
It seems to be a distrortion in the audio input that causes the distortion. ??
I played the audio settings (1 in stead of 100 etc.) but nothing will work.

Maybe you can help ?
Or someone else here
I would appreciate it.
Robert

The S readings are relative strengths rather than an absolute determination, but certainly this is too high if you have no antenna. If you’re on Vista or Windows 7, you need to set the FUNcube Dongle Microphone level to 1 in the Sound control panel applet (by default it’s 100).

Can you email me a screen shot of your settings and the spectrum please to g6lvb at amsat dot org.

Hello
The problem with the device, doesn’t leave the “bootloader mode”.
FCHID006 program constantly error message:
HIDOpen of Vid_04d8&Pid_fb56 returns 1
Success, FCD found.
HIDReadCommand returns 0
Error, FCD read command.
The firmware () of the device passes normally without errors, but it doesn’t help, after switch-off and switching on again “bootloader mode”.
How to solve this problem?

Sounds like your FCD has developed a hardware fault: the default mode when any hardware or software fault occurs is to go into the bootloader.

If you purchased the unit directly from me, send it back to me with your address details and I’ll fix it for you. If you email me a post office tracking number for the returned package and the unit’s serial number with your address to my Paypal email address, I will Fedex a replacement immediately.

Hi!
I ran all the steps for installation, but even local FM stations are not heard.
I am using Windows XP + SDR software and a small wire antenna for testing.
With a HT I did a transmission from the other side of the street, but no signal was demodulated properly. The radio seems to have little sensitivity.

Does anyone have any idea what could be wrong? Must reload another firmware?

The noise level without the antenna is -105 dB and with antenna, -90 db.

Yesterday I could make adjustments that allowed me to pick up signals from local VHF packet station, but it took a lot of work until an acceptable configuration.

Here are my observations and tips for those interested:

1 – If you are in a place with a lot of RF pollution, this SDR does not work well. The initial stage (LNA) is saturated and to try to receive something you need to reduce much the gain. Just got some results with gains near 5 db.
2 – The Funcube is not a normal radio, like a scanner. It is an experiment for reception of weak signals from satellites, but this requires directional antenna to reject signals around or a place of operation without the influence of strong signals that can saturate the LNA. If you want to use the this SDR as a scanner will need lots of skill.
3 – The I and Q adjustments are not easy to be made and require much patience.
4 – Although very simple, SpectraVue is best than the SDR or # RD-Radio. Use it to make first tests to make sure the dongle is working properly.

Finally, a suggestion: When you sell the SDR makes it clear that this is an experiment, not a radio ready to use. I bought this in SDR from Wimo site, in Germany,. As I thought it was a radio ready, got frustrated with the results and no right to complain or get my money back.

On the other hand, wish them luck in product development, it can be a great low cost solution to those interested in satellite operation.

Regarding the use of the FCD in RF crowded situations, we’re aware of this and it’s been discussed both on this site in the FAQ (and in several other posts regarding filtering), and at some length on the FUNcube Yahoo group.

Certainly the FCD is not designed for scanning purposes on its own: it was primarily designed for receiving amateur satellite downlinks, but we decided to keep the wide frequency capability that the hardware could resolve.

I agree that the use of Spectravue as a starting point together with the FCHID control program is the best starting point, and that’s how I test every single FCD. As time goes by, the native FCD support in third party programs like SDR# and SDR Radio has dramatically improved though.

I have tried looking trough the posted answers, but alas I could not find anything similar.

I have had a FCD Pro for a couple of months and have only just got round to trying it out. I have used the excellent instructions posted by Mark Culross and all is fine I can get perfect reception on the VHF broadcast band (I used 93MHz to setup the system). However, I can’t receive anything on 144/145 MHz just noise, I am about half a mile Line of site from my local repeater and cannot even receive this. I am using spectravue and the firmware version is “export18J.pro.bin”. Where am I going wrong?

Thank you very much for your response, which has started me thinking. Your comments implied that all is well with FCD, therefore I eliminated it. Staring at the screen together in deep thought ( a rare occurrence I know) I realize where I have been going wrong and I have to admit it is down to my own stupidity.

My local repeater’s output frequency is 145.7375MHz which is what I have been entering into the FCD and of course it was looking at 1457.375MHz such a stupid mistake. but it begs the question how to enter 12.5KHz channel spacing? I have rounded it up by 0.5KHz which seems to be OK.

Thank you very much for responding it was a great help in directing me to the solution. It would be nice to hear if there is a solution though for 12.5KHz channel spacing.

Apologies for the delay in responding, things have been rather hectic here.

Typically in analogue direct conversion SDRs such as the FCD, it is often necessary to offset the software’s NCO a few kHz away from the 0Hz centre. This is dues to DC offset, LO leakage and phase noise in the hardware. Whereas the DC offset and LO leakage can be nulled out in software (the NCO Null button in Spectravue), the LO phase noise, by its very nature, cannot be predicted, so you end up with a peak around zero Hz.

If you position your software NCO, say, 10kHz away from this 0Hz peak, you avoid the interference from the phase noise peak.

So if you wish to receive 145.7375, set the FCD to, say, 145.700MHz and Spectravue’s NCO to 0.037500MHz.

As Spectravue’s NCO (Demod Frequency) can be set anywhere within the span, this allows you to deal with any arbirtrary spacing you like.

You can also try other software like SDR Radio and SDR Sharp which integrates the FCD’s hadrware LO and the software’s NCO controls.

I am due to be at the AMSAT-NA Symposium. I don’t know yet whether we’ll have any FCDs, we are about to go into conformance testing this week, and the production run is due to start in a couple of weeks.

Oh my! I was hoping to set my laptop on my kitchen table with a small indoor antenna, much like my Homepatrol scanner. I believe I may be in over my head. I would like to purchase and use the dongle as an opportunity to learn. I am sure I would be satisfied with a minimal setup.

Please forgive my inexperience. I will try my best to answer your questions. I would like to listen to the satellite once it is launched, and would like to listen to AM and FM at a minimum. I have a single family home, but again, I was hoping for something I could sit on my kitchen table.

There are desktop scanner antennas available. However, I would advise against using an indoor antenna for satellite reception as the signals are, in general, far weaker than when listening to terrestrial utility stations.

This might be as simple as placing the antenna outside on a balcony: certainly I was able yesterday to pick up a satellite that had been launched from the International Space Station earlier in the day with a 7″ piece of wire mounted on a baking tray on my balcony.

In the UK there is an antenna called the Skyscan V1300 for example. This will be OK for VHF and UHF, but for HF and lower a long piece of wire hung up over you yard will be a lot better.

The connector on the FCD is an SMA so you may well find you need an adapter if your antenna doesn’t have this.

Hello. I purchased a FUNCube Dongle PRO a few months ago, with the intention that we could initially use it for a HAB project that we are working on at the National Science Learning Centre. The goal will be to run a course for teachers, with the possibility of buying more dongles for the regional science learning centres across the UK. The snag is that we are finding it difficult to pick up a decent signal and with limited experience, we don’t know if it is us or the unit that has a problem. I would really appreciate somebody being able to test it – ideally here, in York, but otherwise I can send it off. We’d like to get it sorted out within the next couple of weeks so we know if we need to buy a different receiver. Thanks.

Yes the eCommerce wait list is not very friendly in that regard. I will endeavour to send out a confirmation in the next day or so: it’s a semi manual process where I have to do a database ETL and then a mail merge.

amazing product, so far.
I receiverd the pro+ with serial number 10105. on the 31th of october.
I hesitated a long time to write you, knowing you are overbusy, but I couldn’t solve the problem by myself.

So:
I got the funcube pro + and installed the fcd controller v2.0
I get exactly all the 5 points and set the frequency to the 1000, (Khz).
I loaded the sdr-nightly.zip
I set IQ and I&Q.

So long everything was able to install and recognized through my window7.
When I started the reception I realized just a back noise from the antena (just a short wire), nothing coming in. Taking the wire off, the backnoise went as well.

Later I used the sdr-console and I got the same result.

now the sharp.sdr doesn’t want to open.

You may have an idea.
Thanks for all the patience with your funcube’s and fans.

I recently received three FCDPros and am put one immediately to work in a UHF satellite receive station — very nice.

How soon do you envision full Linux compatibility (if I missed it – I assume I did)? I want to deploy a bunch of FCDPros as remote receiver stations, with minimal Linux hosts (sub-5W kind of things). Linux would enable me to field much smaller and cheaper “PCs” than if I were forced to run Windows, etc.

I have personally used it on Ubuntu 12.04 with Quisk and QTHID successfully. I am also aware that there has been some success on the Raspberry Pi by some Dutch guys, although I don’t know if that’s been released publicly yet. I did some work myself on the Raspberry Pi a few weeks ago, trying to port QTHID but I found that trying to develop QT apps on the R-Pi was like trying to stand on a log on a river: the environment was changing so much, both QT and the Raspian distro, that the getting a reliable dev environment up and running was a life’s work in itself! Since then, I believe the Alex Csete may well have had some success with this though: check out the FCDProPlus and FCDDevelopment Yahoo groups, I know there’s some recent stuff there.

In the web site I cannot get information related to the filter wideband setting.
I want to use the FCD Pro+ as SDR so I am interesting in to receive end demodulate CW and SSB signals with 0.5khz to 3khz of wideband. I’s that possible?

The filtering you’re referring to is not the same as the front end filter used on the FCD+: all demodulation is done on the host computer, not on the FCD, so this is a function of the software such as SDR Radio or SDR Sharp for example.

Certainly these programs have completely programmable filter widths down to a few Hz as required.

Howard,
I am trying to get my FCD Pro V1.1 working with my ipad and iSDR. The author of the software claims with a powered hub several users have in the past got this to work. I am unable to have success. From what it looks like IOS6 is not determining that the FCD is a Stereo Audio device. Has the VID and PID changed in the last year?
The way the program seems to work is when you plug in a suitable device if senses it and changes the sample rate from 22.1 kHz to 44.2 kHz on the application. It does this is if you plug in something like a Griffin iMic. It does not seem to properly detect the FCD, or it does not figure its a stereo device.
Do you have any suggestions or ideas? The iSDR app looks so cool and its a shame that it seems not to work with the FCD like claimed. The authour of iSDR says it used to work so it must be a device issue.
I have posted to the Yahoo group a query if anyone has FCD and iSDR working but no response.
If you want to discuss this further via email or Skype let me know.

There are some limitations in iOS’s USB host audio stack, and certainly I have never been able to get the FCD to work under iOS. Certainly I believe it will not work with a 96kHz sampling rate: this is also reflected in the lack of such third party audio devices. However I did also amend the code a year or so ago to 48kHz which is supported but I could not get that to work either. I am not sure why that was, but after spending some hours at it, I moved on to other things I’m afraid. It may be because the FCD is a composite device that’s not recognised by iOS, but I’m not at all sure.

Howard,
Thanks that is what I needed to know. It is a shame as the app looks cool. If you have tried without success me looking at it further seems like a waste of my time.
I am starting to love my device once I got a filter on the front end. 😀
Thank you
Dave

Due to the unexpected development of the FCD+ due to the demise of the chip supply for the FCD, that project is in temporary hibernation, but I will be working on it again early in the new year. It is _Very_ cool!

Howard,
I have not been keeping up on things for sure. If I had read that post I could have been doing different things the last couple of days instead of flogging my dead horse. LOL
That is exactly what the doctor ordered. I am interested for sure. I will keep an eye out and be in the front of the line to try one out. If there is anything I can help you out with just ask.

small question:
my funcube pro + received three days ago seems to go into saturation in the band of 23 cm. Basically if I connect only the center hole can receive two beacons around but if I connect the antenna connector correctly increases the noise and signals disappear. This does not happen with the same antennas and with the dongle based on rtl2832u E4000.
Any ideas, suggestions?
For the rest it seems that everything is working properly.
thanks and regards,
Lucio, I0LYL

PS: I tried to change all the parameters of the FCD + without any appreciable result.

I want to use my FunCube dongle pro+ for decoding signals on Multipsk. The output is not good enough. I is offered by Multipsk as a source but is not working. Is there a way of improving this. I am new to this area of radio but I am very willing to learn.

I think you’re going to have to give us a bit more detail as to how you’retrying to achieve this including your software set up. May I also recommend the FCDProPlus Yahoo group? There are a lot of folks there also who may be able to help you.

It creates a set of virtual audio devices named “Virtual Cables”, each of them consists of a pair of the waveform input/output devices. Any application can send audio stream to an output side of a cable, and any other application can receive this stream from an input side. All transfers are made digitally, providing NO sound quality loss (a bitperfect streaming).”

When you install the software Virtual Audio Cable in PC sound system you will see a new device VIRTUAL.
The sound that comes out of FUNcube Dongle Pro + instead of the speakers will be sent to this new device Virtual Audio Cable.
The program to get sound from FUNcube Dongle Pro + is set to receive audio from this virtual device and everything is working perfectly without any physical connections.
perhaps a picture is worth a thousand words.

” admin says:
December 17, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Hello Lucio
… Does switching the LNA off make any appreciable difference? ”
——-
Hi Howard,
… no, no difference.
my problem, unfortunately, is very simple. My FCD Pro + works well on all bands except the band of 1296 MHz
On the band of 1296 MHz under the same antenna works better the DVB-T/FM (rtlsdr) dongles compared to FCD Pro +.
I’ve tried everything, believe me, but things do not change. It seems that the FCD Pro + goes into saturation for a strong signal that I have around.
Regards, Lucio
—–

@ Arthur

for best results with Multipsk and all programs that require a separate audio connection must use Virtual Audio Cable. Search google Virtual Audio Cable

I have just been trying a unit on 1296MHz here with two vertical antennas, on one it seems fine and on the other I have a similar raising of the noise floor but if I switch off the mixer gain it improves a great deal. You are right that the LNA gain doesn’t appear to do much, maybe 2 or 3 dB difference.

I need to investigate further to see what is causing this. In addition there are some tweaks I can do in the firmware to change the filter profile on L band.

I purchased a used funcube dongle and it is very deaf in comparison with the rtl-sdr dongle I also have. It has been suggested that the input coupling cap a smt 0805 part might be cracked. I would like to replace it. Any suggestions for an easy way to open the funcube dongle and what value capacitor should I use.

To whom it may concern, – I need help!
A few days ago I’ve purchased a FCD Pro+. I’m running Windows XP (on the two Computers I tried to make the FCD go). With the software SDR Sharp the stick is working. My Problem is: Whenever I start the FCDHid 003 (exe), after having started the program SpectraVue, the stick is not recognized by the system and a message in the FCDHid shows up: “HIDOpen of Vid_04D8&Pid_fb56 returns 0 Error, FCD not found: is FCD correctly installed?” Obviously the stick is not recognised by the system althoug it is working together with SDR Sharp.
When I first connected the stick to the computer, it was recognised and I got the usual message : ” …. and you can use it now”.
What can I do to find out the stick’s firmware an how can I update this firmware accordingly? – Thanks for your help.
Best regards
Wolfgang Matti (DL5TP)

The FCD+ is a receiver, not a transmitter. It is designed to work without any internet connection (other than to download software that you want to use initially). So you will need an antenna. This can be as simple as a paper clip if all you want to do is listen to your local FM broadcast station to a long wire or other external antenna installation. The rule of thumb is that an externally located antenna mounted high up will always work better than one inside. Choosing which antenna to use depends on what you want to receive, what you can get away with at your location, and what your budget is.

What kind of static protection, if any, is on the front end of the FCDP+? We had a T-storm through here the other day and although no close hits the dongle doesn’t work any more. I’m assuming a static build up may have come in on the antenna feed.

Is there any way to repair the device or is it to be come a nice “what’s that” for my desktop?

I did enjoy using it for the short time it was working – very impressive!

There is plenty: it has back-to-back diodes on the RF input and a full set of USB ESD protection diodes too. The ESD protection on both ports is rated to 8kV.

I am pleased to offer to repair your device for no charge, please send it to the address on the invoice that accompanied your invoice, and if you are outside the European Union mark the package “for repair” or else I have to pay import duty!

Hello, Howard: Just looking arround to see if my problem of non operation and changed designation ( from Dongle Pro+ v2. something to Pro+ V.0.01 (from memory) was explained on this comments and FAQ site. Have put the unit aside till I get some feedback.
Also: I may have seen why the sudden spurt of interest earlier this year: in the Amsat journal I receive there was a report on using the Dongle as part of a Moon Bounce transception system. That plus a piece in QST on a number of new satellites about to go up ( seven where mentioned in that report in the Eclectic Technology column, including the Funcube). The Amsat Journal also had a listing that included most of these satellites and the OSSI-1 which will have radio gear and an optical emitter beacon. The relavent publication dates are: Amsat Journal for may/June, and, QST for July, 2013.
Thanks, earl.

Howard – I’m not sure how to contact you but through this blog here; but I’m looking for some information on interfacing with the FCDPro+.

I’m intending on writing a frequency control + SDR Receive application for Android 4.x that uses the FCDPro+, as well as a frequency control component for Linux.

I’ve gone through the frequency control source, and my question comes down to USB enumeration… I know that under Windows when I attach the FCDPro+, I see the HID and sound device, separate devices.

However, enumerating in Linux and Android, I get the VID+PID for the FCD and that’s all good and fine, but I’m wondering if I should be looking for two different USB endpoints? Is Endpoint 0 the HID and Endpoint 1 the sound device?

Should there be more than one VID+PID enumeratable upon attach? I’m seeing 04D8&FB31 , and that appears to be the HID (on USB endpoint 0, at least) – but should there be a separate PID for the stereo sound device?

For some reason at 192KHz sampling, there is a lot of noise at the edges of the sample. If only about 100KHz are used for sampling then no noise appears! These screenshots are taken with LNA and Mixer gain deactivated, also IF was set to 0dB.
Any suggestions?
Take care!

These are noise artifacts from the sigma-delta ADC. By deactivating the LNA and mixer gains, and also reducing the IF gain, these artifacts appear amplified. You can fix this by simply increasing the gain level(s) so it’s hidden. This is of course at the expense of some dynamic range, but you’re already showing 100dB down there even at the band edges.

Hi Folks,
i am using the SDRSharp v.1.0.0.318 program with the FunCube Dongle Pro
Plus.
It is a couple of days that I am noticing that while I am receiving, the
program stops but the bottom side of the program keeps showing the
time scrolling down and I can see vertical lines, while the top is freezed.
To restart receiving I have to press the stop/play button and it restart
receiving but after a while, I get again the same problem and after
have done the above procedure a couple of times i get an error which says:

paUnaticipatedHostError

and the programs becomes stuck and I cannot close it.
To close it i need to use the CTRL+ALT+TAB to get the management activities
windows and force the closure but after this i cannot open anymore the
program since
i do not reboot the PC or unplug the FunCube Dongle Pro Plus.
As I unplug the FunCube Dongle Pro Plus the program pops up.
Please anybody can tell me what has happened and how to solve it?
Any help will be really appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Typically this error is a bit of a catch-all in SDRSharp when used with the FCD. Once the error pops up, you seem to need to restart SDRSharp. The spectrum scrolling is just replaying the last batch of samples the program’s received from the FCD.

I am wondering if there’s a loose connection on your USB port if the problem suddenly happens in the middle of using the FCD with SDRSharp? Perhaps you can try a different USB port. If you use Device Manager, does the FCD disappear and come back when this happens?

Hello,
i am having problem to let my FCDPP work on my PC.
I have used till a couple of days ago with SDRSharp but not i cannot let it work anymore.Everytime i try to play it does not work i cannot hear anything and also i do not see anything on the spectrum.
I have tried to delete the drivers from the device manager and now i cannot install it any more.
I have noticed that it works jut on USB 3.0 ports but i hear the audi with vibration and hiccups.
I have tried with another PC but when i plug it into the USB port ( 2.0 because not have 3.0 on this PC ),nothing happens and if i go to Device manager, i can see under the speakers section the FunCube Dongle V2.0 but it has a Yellow Triangle with a black Esclamation point in the miiddle.
Please how to fix everything?
Also is there any chance to test if the FCDPP is damaged?
Is there a posibility to end it backfor a check?
If yes how to do it and who to send it?
Any help will be really appreciated.
73’s de Enzo IK8OZV

Hello Howard,
i am having problem to let my FCDPP work on my PC.
I have used till a couple of days ago with SDRSharp but not i cannot let it work anymore.Everytime i try to play it does not work i cannot hear anything and also i do not see anything on the spectrum.
I have tried to delete the drivers from the device manager and now i cannot install it any more.
I have noticed that it works jut on USB 3.0 ports but i hear the audi with vibration and hiccups.
I have tried with another PC but when i plug it into the USB port ( 2.0 because not have 3.0 on this PC ),nothing happens and if i go to Device manager, i can see under the speakers section the FunCube Dongle V2.0 but it has a Yellow Triangle with a black Esclamation point in the miiddle.
Please how to fix everything?
Also is there any chance to test if the FCDPP is damaged?
Is there a posibility to end it backfor a check?
If yes how to do it and who to send it?
Any help will be really appreciated.
73’s de Enzo IK8OZV

It is dependent on whether we can obtain chips for the original unit. The liquidator for the assets of the original chip manufacturer has been dragging their heals, so many who used their device have had to redesign, including us.

I’m surprised that you consider the frequency range to be more restricted. Yes, there is a gap between around 240 to 420 MHz. On the other hand, the new device adds HF, 6m, complete 23cm coverage, and Medium and Long wave. The ~200MHz gap in the old FCD up at around 1GHz is now covered.

I am sure I’ll be asked the question about the 240 to 420MHz gap a million more times, but for the record, to close it would mean a new daughter board inside the unit either containing a frequency converter or an additional tuner chip covering that range. I considered doing just that, but it would add £40 to the retail cost to do this, so we didn’t consider it worthwhile. I will reiterate once again that the FCD’s primary purpose is and has always been to receive the FUNcube satellite on 145MHz. Anything more is a bonus, and I’m sure you’ll agree there’s quite a lot more!

I didn’t mean to insult your newer device by suggesting that it’s range was more restricted. It just that my current requirement is to measure and record signal strength in the 310Mhz band, which is exactly where you state that the FCD Pro+ has a coverage gap.

Also, responding to your earlier post regarding the measurement of signal strength as being a software issue; I guess I should have been more specific an ask if the software you supply with the FCD Pro (assuming you supply software) has the capability to measure and record signal strength?

Howard, I purchased the funcube dongle pro plus a number of years ago. Had a problem where it stopped working – thought it was a static problem did damage to the device. You were kind enough to replace it with sn 0014417. Today a storm came through with lightning while I was at work. The antenna was still connected (I usually disconnect it when I’m finished using the device). Long story short the fcdpp no longer works. When I try to connect I get a message that the device was not found. Can you repair these in any way? Please let me know so I can decide what to do.
TIA,
Brian Ferguson

No problem! We looked at what was on the gap from 240MHz to 420MHz and noted that there was no global amateur or broadcast allocation there. It was difficult to justify the additional cost that would be required to cover this segment, and I did spend some time looking into this, including even adding a second tuner to achieve this.

We felt we were in danger of over-complicating and adding unnecessary cost.

The FCD Pro+ has a control program which sets the various parameters specific to the FCD. To perform any kind of signal analysis and demodulation, it uses a standard sound card interface that works with many freely available programs across the Windows/Mac/Linux spectrum.

I don’t know if there is software already there that does precisely what you want to achieve: typically demodulation software will include and AGC so it’s not as simple as looking at the amplitude output of an SDR program, unless you can switch that AGC off of course.

My requirement actually had nothing to do with amateur radio. I am actually interested in determining the effectiveness of antennas, as I vary design parameters. So my interest in the FCD was to use it more as a diagnostic tool.